Rand Paul Versus Civil Rights

[Valley Oak]

Rand Paul versus the Civil Rights Act | Richard Adams | World news | guardian.co.uk

Rand Paul versus the Civil Rights Act
Rand Paul appears on the Rachel Maddow show and says that the Civil Rights Act was wrong to outlaw private acts of racism
Rachel Maddow was on fine form on her talkshow last night, in her interview with Rand Paul, the victor of the Republican party Senate primary in Kentucky on Tuesday. Like his father Ron, Rand has a rag-bag of controversial ideas, one being that the government should largely stay out of private interactions.

In practice, this means that a private business which, for whatever reason, doesn't want to serve any particular group – women, blacks, take your pick – should be legally allowed to do so. He said he would have sought to amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 – the landmark legislation that largely destroyed the Jim Crow laws that survived until that era – to change the part outlawing discrimination by private institutions.

Vehemently denying that he was racist and maintaining that he would not give business to any that practised discrimination, Paul draws a parallel between allowing private institutions to discriminate and the right to free speech. But Paul's error there is comparing different classes of rights. Courts and the law generally draw a distinction between speech and acts – and barring a person on the grounds of race or sex from an institution otherwise open to the public is most certainly an act.

His other argument – that those who favour outlawing discrimination face a contradiction if they also support allowing bans on guns in private institutions by, say a restaurant owner – borders on naive. Carrying a gun is an act and a choice but being black or a woman is not an act in any sense.

The controversy that Paul's remarks sparked off even reached the White House, and Paul himself put out a statement this afternoon clarifying his position:

Let me be clear: I support the Civil Rights Act because I overwhelmingly agree with the intent of the legislation, which was to stop discrimination in the public sphere and halt the abhorrent practice of segregation and Jim Crow laws.

The transcript is very revealing, if you can't watch the video clip above (the full segment is 19 minutes long). Here are some of the most noteworthy exchanges:

Rachel Maddow: But maybe voting against the Civil Rights Act which wasn't just about governmental discrimination but public accommodations, the idea that people who provided services that were open to the public had to do so in a nondiscriminatory fashion.

Let me ask you a specific so we don't get into the esoteric hypotheticals here.

Rand Paul: Well, there's 10, there's 10 different titles, you know, to the Civil Rights Act, and nine out of 10 deal with public institutions. And I'm absolutely in favor. One deals with private institutions, and had I been around, I would have tried to modify that.... I do defend and believe that the government should not be involved with institutional racism or discrimination or segregation in schools, busing, all those things. But had I been there, there would have been some discussion over one of the titles of the civil rights.

And I think that's a valid point, and still a valid discussion, because the thing is, is if we want to harbor in on private businesses and their policies, then you have to have the discussion about: do you want to abridge the First Amendment as well. Do you want to say that because people say abhorrent things – you know, we still have this. We're having all this debate over hate speech and this and that. Can you have a newspaper and say abhorrent things? Can you march in a parade and believe in abhorrent things, you know?

....

Maddow: Hold on just one second. Until the year 2000, Bob Jones University, a private institution, had a ban on interracial dating at their school, their private institution. If Bob Jones University wanted to bring that back now, would you support their right to do so?

Paul: Well, I think it's interesting because the debate involves more than just that, because the debate also involves a lot of court cases with regard to the commerce clause. For example, right now, many states and many gun organizations are saying they have a right to carry a gun in a public restaurant because a public restaurant is not a private restaurant. Therefore, they have a right to carry their gun in there and that the restaurant has no right to have rules to their restaurant.

So, you see how this could be turned on many liberal observers who want to excoriate me on this. Then to be consistent, they'd have to say, oh, well, yes, absolutely, you've got your right to carry your gun anywhere because it's a public place.

....

Maddow: Do you think that a private business has the right to say we don't serve black people?

Paul: Yes. I'm not in favor of any discrimination of any form. I would never belong to any club that excluded anybody for race. We still do have private clubs in America that can discriminate based on race.

But I think what's important about this debate is not written into any specific "gotcha" on this, but asking the question: what about freedom of speech? Should we limit speech from people we find abhorrent? Should we limit racists from speaking?

...

Maddow: And should Woolworth's lunch counter should have been allowed to stay segregated? Sir, just yes or no.

Paul: What I think would happen, what I'm saying is, is that I don't believe in any discrimination. I don't believe in any private property should discriminate either. And I wouldn't attend, wouldn't support, wouldn't go to.

But what you have to answer when you answer this point of view, which is an abstract, obscure conversation from 1964 that you want to bring up. But if you want to answer, you have to say then that you decide the rules for all restaurants and then you decide that you want to allow them to carry weapons into restaurants.

David Weigel, the Washington Post blogger who covers the conservative right and Tea Party movement, attempts to give an even-handed exegesis of Rand Paul's position:

So is Rand Paul a racist? No, and it's irritating to watch his out-of-context quotes – this and a comment about how golf was no longer for elitists because Tiger Woods plays golf – splashed on the web to make that point. Paul believes, as many conservatives believe, that the government should ban bias in all of its institutions but cannot intervene in the policies of private businesses. Those businesses, as Paul argues, take a risk by maintaining, in this example, racist policies. Patrons can decide whether or not to give them their money, or whether or not to make a fuss about their policies. That, not government regulation and intervention, is how bias should be eliminated in the private sector. And in this belief Paul is joined by some conservatives who resent that liberals seek government intervention for every unequal outcome.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2010

[Barry]

See the New York Times article about this here:
Tea Party Pick Causes Uproar on Civil Rights - NYTimes.com

It includes the Rachel Maddow (my new hero!) video. Well worth watching!

Barry