Rand Paul Has a Little Problem w/ the Civil Rights Act

[Simulist]

I'm not normally a big supporter of the U.S. Government. But on those off-days, when it actually ensures constitutional rights instead of stripping them away from ordinary people, I can be a fan.

[nathan28]

Didn't Rand-P rescind this comment today?

Anyway dude is basically Ron Paul without any redeeming qualities at all. Fuck, at least his dad was going to make getting high legal, so forty years from now, if I make it that far, I wouldn't have any memories of the coming fascist regime.

[Wombaticus Rex]

* Those of you who still maintain sympathies for some image of the Tea Party as anything other than the real-life Republican base being astroturfed by FOXNEWS to rally on behalf of total corporatism and more wars need to get over it already.

I was holding out hope until a few months ago. Palin speaking was such an obvious cue I was pretty embarrassed at my own naivete...as usual, again.

[compared2what?]

Rand Paul On 'Maddow' Defends Criticism Of Civil Rights Act, Says He Would Have Worked To Change Bill (VIDEO)


....Paul told Maddow that he agrees with most parts of the Civil Rights Act, except for one (Title II), that made it a crime for private businesses to discriminate against customers on the basis of race. Paul explained that had he been in office during debate of bill, he would have tried to change the legislation. He said that it stifled first amendment rights:

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

Paul: 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 do discriminate.

But I think what's important in this debate is not getting 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. I don't want to be associated with those people, but I also don't want to limit their speech in any way in the sense that we tolerate boorish and uncivilized behavior because that's one of the things that freedom requires is that we allow people to be boorish and uncivilized, but that doesn't mean we approve of it...

That would be a coherent response in whatever dimension features a United States that's populated by private businesspeople whose love for the constitution leads them to treat all citizens as equal under the law but who still, for some reason, cherish their right to say that they don't serve black people.

But in this one, what was challenged and correctly found unconstitutional was their denial of service to black people. Which is an action. Not an expression.

That's why it's not covered under the first amendment. With which it has nothing to do.

Paul: Well what it gets into then is if you decide that restaurants are publicly owned and not privately owned, then do you say that you should have the right to bring your gun into a restaurant even though the owner of the restaurant says 'well no, we don't want to have guns in here' the bar says 'we don't want to have guns in here because people might drink and start fighting and shoot each-other.' Does the owner of the restaurant own his restaurant? Or does the government own his restaurant? These are important philosophical debates but not a very practical discussion...

By golly, if you didn't know that the Bill of Rights doesn't guarantee the freedom of restaurant owners to commit whatever crimes they feel like committing as long as they commit them exclusively at the restaurants they own, I guess that might strike you as a purely conceptual issue!

Although even then, I really don't see how it could strike you as an important one. Not that it matters much. Because there is no such right. And you'd figure that anyone who was running for federal office would be aware of it.

He's scary.

[compared2what?]

I may be a fan of his father but ... Rand is no Ron.

randliar.png

Rand is NOT antiwar (much) and has been chastised for appearing on the AntiWar-Radio show:

Around the 1:12 mark

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyaGlfIsupA

Well....Be fair. I mean, Rand is a carbon copy of Ron when it comes to the Civil Rights Act, though. They're both strongly opposed to it on exactly the same specious grounds. You gotta give him that.

As for the OP ... I don't like discrimination but I also don't like the govt forcing things on us.

Well what it gets into then is if you decide that restaurants are publicly owned and not privately owned, then do you say that you should have the right to bring your gun into a restaurant even though the owner of the restaurant says 'well no, we don't want to have guns in here' the bar says 'we don't want to have guns in here because people might drink and start fighting and shoot each-other.' Does the owner of the restaurant own his restaurant? Or does the government own his restaurant? These are important philosophical debates but not a very practical discussion....

For me there is a terrible jolt when one goes from exclusion based on gender (as with Boy Scouts / Girl Scouts etc. or Men's Club's / Women's Club's) to the exclusion of person's based on biological ethnicity.

Really? What kind of jolt?

And there's no inflection or implication or indictment (or other value-laden word starting with "i" that I can't think of right now) in the question, btw.

I actually just don't understand what you're saying.

[82_28]

Even though the depravity of the scared human soul will never shock me, I still remain shocked at it's depravity. If we can't see a black human as a human, an Asian human as a human, a Mexican human ad infinitum. Yet still cling to this shit that we're being attacked by outsiders and swarthy types. What the fuck hope is there for us? Who and what the fuck are we white fuckers?

Hopefully this is the last hiccup in the realm of modern day stereotyping. I fully fucking doubt it. They're just gonna make it worse, make us stupider, and then feed us even worse shit than they feed us now to make us even more stupid again. How about some oil with your fishery wetlands. We need a SPARK! Something to wake everybody up! I just so hope that this Gulf of Mexico bullshit is it. Everybody on one side and "them" on the other. They can even join us if they want. We don't need no violence. But this shit needs to come to an end. This oil slick could just be the trick. But at the end of the day, it will all be pawned off on Obama's figurehead. And hence it all comes to a head as I long ago imagined and why I didn't vote at all.

Tell me, why the fuck we have a census which is mandatory, but voting is not and is, as they say, voluntary and has no demographic "functionality" other than the census's ability to gerrymander the fuck out of shit, but the census is mandatory? You see that shit? Yes. I may not have put it the best. But look at that. Census>Voting.

But it is all played off as naive and benign. They ask you a bunch of questions about your "race" and other bullshit database oddities and then they add it all in and do the math. Hooray!!! Score a win for America. But voting. Oh no, no, no. You can vote if you want, but it doesn't really matter.

The census sure as fuck does. I tried to dodge it, but they caught me drinking a beer on my deck. There was nothing I could do.

[Joe Hillshoist]

Who would call their kid Rand anyway.

Seriously.

Rand.

Not even Randy.

[82_28]

Who would call their kid Rand anyway.

Seriously.

Rand.

Not even Randy.

Ayn might. . .

[compared2what?]

Wait, elfismiles was right. Rand is no Ron:

REVERSAL: Paul Now Backs Ban On Discrimination By Businesses

In the space of a few hours today, Rand Paul first hedged, then reversed, then, finally, repudiated his previously stated opposition to a key section of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

It began with the Kentucky senate candidate issuing a statement saying he would not favor repeal of the Civil Rights Act. But the statement fell short of supporting the power of the government to ban racial discrimination by private businesses.

Then, a couple hours later, his campaign issued a statement (via Greg Sargent) saying that Paul does in fact support the power of the federal government "to insure that private businesses don't discriminate based on race."

That was a walk back of Paul's comment on Rachel Maddow Wednesday night that, referring to the section of the 1964 Civil Rights Act that bars private institutions from race-based discrimination, "had I been around, I would have tried to modify that."

Said Paul spokesman Jesse Benton (who, by the way, was also a spokesman for Ron Paul's 2008 presidential campaign):

"Civil Rights legislation that has been affirmed by our courts gives the Federal government the right to insure that private businesses don't discriminate based on race. Dr. Paul supports those powers."

Finally, Paul went on CNN late this afternoon and told Wolf Blitzer of the Civil Rights Act: "I would have voted yes ... There was a need for federal intervention."

I mean, at least his father was willing to stand right up and say that the Civil Rights Act unconstitutionally expanded federal power, reduced liberty and actually caused racism. And as recently as 2004, too. However little sense it makes.

Which is very little. So it's really no wonder that his spokesperson apparently didn't quite grasp the gist of it.

Anyway.

More at link.

[82_28]

Like here's another example. A buddy of mine is off at sea playing drums on a cruise ship until September. He didn't get counted, he's on a foreign boat and under the authority of another country as being employed by them. What a fucking scam USA and what a shame. Will these wheels please come off this shit very soon so we can at least know what we're working with? Jesus fucking Christ. Let's get this over with.

[Joe Hillshoist]

A buddy of mine is off at sea playing drums on a cruise ship until September. ... he's on a foreign boat...

Sorry couldn't resist.

[Gouda]

Rand Paul Has a Little Problem w/ the Civil Rights Act...and any infringement on the freedom of BP to have 'accidents'

Crossposting:

Rand Paul: WH criticism of BP sounds 'un-American'

By MICHELE SALCEDO, Associated Press Writer Michele Salcedo, Associated Press Writer – 2 mins ago

WASHINGTON – Kentucky's Republican Senate candidate Rand Paul criticized President Barack Obama's handling of the Gulf oil spill Friday as putting "his boot heel on the throat of BP" and "really un-American."

Paul's defense of the oil company came during an interview in which he tried to explain his controversial take on civil rights law, an issue that has overtaken his campaign since his victory in Tuesday's GOP primary.

"What I don't like from the president's administration is this sort of, 'I'll put my boot heel on the throat of BP,'" Rand said in an interview with ABC's "Good Morning America." "I think that sounds really un-American in his criticism of business."

...

On the oil spill, Paul, a libertarian and tea party darling, said he had heard nothing from BP indicating it wouldn't pay for the spill that threatens devastating environmental damage along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico.

"And I think it's part of this sort of blame-game society in the sense that it's always got to be somebody's fault instead of the fact that maybe sometimes accidents happen," Paul said.

The senate candidate referred to a Kentucky coal mine accident that killed two men, saying he had met with the families and he admired the coal miners' courage.

"We had a mining accident that was very tragic. ... Then we come in and it's always someone's fault. Maybe sometimes accidents happen," he said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100521/ap_ ... _rand_paul

[yathrib]

A minor point, but no one has asked to my knowledge: Is Rand Paul named after the dreadful right wing author Ayn Rand, or after the South African gold currency libertarian economic nut jobs love(d) so much?

[JackRiddler]

I have a love-hate relationship with the moment when events confirm my belief that something was indeed as bad as I thought, contrary to the hopes of so many. Of course I like being right, but I don't take joy in seeing hopes crushed and I also like to maintain a sense of uncertainty and self-critique, lest I get arrogant and start "seeing what I believe."

But there we go, events demand acknowledgement:

The "Tea Party" is the ideologically committed Republican base. As these things go, this voting bloc is more fanatic in their dogmatic renderings of "conservative" and "libertarian" beliefs than other elements of the disintegrating Republican voting milieu. But they are not far removed from the views of the elected Republican leadership, who are already a pretty hard-right crew. (I put conservative and libertarian in quotes because neither is used according to proper definition. Nevertheless these are the labels that have stuck to describe these ideologies.)

After a majority of voters rejected the Bush agenda and the Republican Party fell into discredit, this "conservative" demographic was astroturfed into a counterfeit "third party" movement by FOXNEWS and the rest of the right-wing talking points noise machine. Presto, change-o. Right-wing activists with teabags on their heads running to hear Sarah Palin speak at an event promoted by Glenn Beck are rebranded as pitchfork populists. These are "the people," and they want their country back from the Socialist Muslim Obama.

Populism is a natural, necessary and overdue response to the escalating class war from above. But there is a vacuum of genuine populism, because with Democrats in power they and the liberal movement leaders are trying to curb any deviation from the administration line, which is corporatist and represents a consolidation of the Bush regime's achievements. This allows the teabaggers to step in, at least for now.

At the call of the right-wing media they are dispatched to go out and howl some confused mix of anti-banking, "anti-government," and anti-liberal slogans, mixed in with a lot of racist and hypernationalist shit they can't help but include because that, fundamentally, is what motivates these people. The racist dogwhistle especially is what attracts the numbers to the rallies.

The practical upshot in terms of what they're actually for is corporatism in its purest, most extreme form. The tragedy of the bailouts, for example, is not that banks first destroyed the economy and then commandeered the Treasury to save themselves, but that government "took over the banks" under a "Socialist" president. Rand's grotesque response to the unfolding catastrophe in the Gulf is to rush to poor beleaguered BP's defense. The answer to everything is a rollback in government regulation, with slogans that haven't changed in 35 years. Imperialism is always left out of that, however. They don't even bother with the show of opposing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that Ron Paul at least provided. On the contrary, Rand sees enemies in Bolivia and Venezuela as reliably as Bush did.

Whatever "tea parties" were being held prior to Obama's election are irrelevant. Whatever Ron Paul's wide variety of supporters thought he stood for in 2008 is irrelevant. That includes the apparent anti-imperialist stance that gains more attention than anything he stands for - except perhaps for the call to return to 19th century modes of banking.

Both of these had the well-intentioned Paulites confused. But anti-imperialism was dispensable to the passion for total freedom for corporations, as the Tea Party in full bloom with Rand at its head now shows. Meanwhile, the "End the Fed" talk is confused by many as being against banksterism as a matter of principle, when it is merely against the present forms of banksterism's self-government. Its upshot would be to return to the gold standard that once mired the people in a deflationary poverty (and caused them to rise up as the original populists, against the gold-standard banksterism of the 19th century). Not only is this undesirable, it is impossible in modern economies.

Forget the fallacy of an original Tea Party that was "hijacked." They were a small minority of the current movement. Rand is the real nuts, as they say in poker. We can hope he is also the kryptonite knife lodged between the ribs of the Republican Party.

All along the Tea Party has been an echo chamber of disaffected Republicans convincing themselves they are the majority, contrary to the facts, pumped up by corporate media, attracting many well-meaning people who yearn for a real populism, but also (further) alienating most people from their positions. Now it looks like the well-meaning people are giving up on it and the whole thing is about to implode. (Can it take Alex Jones with it, please?!) The timing is interesting, because the sucker's market of 2009 is deflating and the delayed financial collapse of 2008 looks like it is resuming. The failure of capitalism is once again going to be obvious, and it's crucial that the right-wing noise machine does not turn that into the "failure of Obama" and revival of the Republicans. With disillusionment about Obama having set already a year ago, maybe we're going to see a real movement for peace and social justice arise.

[17breezes]

I have a love-hate relationship with the moment when events confirm my belief that something was indeed as bad as I thought, contrary to the hopes of so many. Of course I like being right, but I don't take joy in seeing hopes crushed and I also like to maintain a sense of uncertainty and self-critique, lest I get arrogant and start "seeing what I believe."

But there we go, events demand acknowledgement:

The "Tea Party" is the ideologically committed Republican base. As these things go, this voting bloc is more fanatic in their dogmatic renderings of "conservative" and "libertarian" beliefs than other elements of the disintegrating Republican voting milieu. But they are not far removed from the views of the elected Republican leadership, who are already a pretty hard-right crew. (I put conservative and libertarian in quotes because neither is used according to proper definition. Nevertheless these are the labels that have stuck to describe these ideologies.)

After a majority of voters rejected the Bush agenda and the Republican Party fell into discredit, this "conservative" demographic was astroturfed into a counterfeit "third party" movement by FOXNEWS and the rest of the right-wing talking points noise machine. Presto, change-o. Right-wing activists with teabags on their heads running to hear Sarah Palin speak at an event promoted by Glenn Beck are rebranded as pitchfork populists. These are "the people," and they want their country back from the Socialist Muslim Obama.

Populism is a natural, necessary and overdue response to the escalating class war from above. But there is a vacuum of genuine populism, because with Democrats in power they and the liberal movement leaders are trying to curb any deviation from the administration line, which is corporatist and represents a consolidation of the Bush regime's achievements. This allows the teabaggers to step in, at least for now.

At the call of the right-wing media they are dispatched to go out and howl some confused mix of anti-banking, "anti-government," and anti-liberal slogans, mixed in with a lot of racist and hypernationalist shit they can't help but include because that, fundamentally, is what motivates these people. The racist dogwhistle especially is what attracts the numbers to the rallies.

The practical upshot in terms of what they're actually for is corporatism in its purest, most extreme form. The tragedy of the bailouts, for example, is not that banks first destroyed the economy and then commandeered the Treasury to save themselves, but that government "took over the banks" under a "Socialist" president. Rand's grotesque response to the unfolding catastrophe in the Gulf is to rush to poor beleaguered BP's defense. The answer to everything is a rollback in government regulation, with slogans that haven't changed in 35 years. Imperialism is always left out of that, however. They don't even bother with the show of opposing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that Ron Paul at least provided. On the contrary, Rand sees enemies in Bolivia and Venezuela as reliably as Bush did.

Whatever "tea parties" were being held prior to Obama's election are irrelevant. Whatever Ron Paul's wide variety of supporters thought he stood for in 2008 is irrelevant. That includes the apparent anti-imperialist stance that gains more attention than anything he stands for - except perhaps for the call to return to 19th century modes of banking.

Both of these had the well-intentioned Paulites confused. But anti-imperialism was dispensable to the passion for total freedom for corporations, as the Tea Party in full bloom with Rand at its head now shows. Meanwhile, the "End the Fed" talk is confused by many as being against banksterism as a matter of principle, when it is merely against the present forms of banksterism's self-government. Its upshot would be to return to the gold standard that once mired the people in a deflationary poverty (and caused them to rise up as the original populists, against the gold-standard banksterism of the 19th century). Not only is this undesirable, it is impossible in modern economies.

Forget the fallacy of an original Tea Party that was "hijacked." They were a small minority of the current movement. Rand is the real nuts, as they say in poker. We can hope he is also the kryptonite knife lodged between the ribs of the Republican Party.

All along the Tea Party has been an echo chamber of disaffected Republicans convincing themselves they are the majority, contrary to the facts, pumped up by corporate media, attracting many well-meaning people who yearn for a real populism, but also (further) alienating most people from their positions. Now it looks like the well-meaning people are giving up on it and the whole thing is about to implode. (Can it take Alex Jones with it, please?!) The timing is interesting, because the sucker's market of 2009 is deflating and the delayed financial collapse of 2008 looks like it is resuming. The failure of capitalism is once again going to be obvious, and it's crucial that the right-wing noise machine does not turn that into the "failure of Obama" and revival of the Republicans. With disillusionment about Obama having set already a year ago, maybe we're going to see a real movement for peace and social justice arise.

Somehow critiques like these always boil down to a distasteful "stupid sheeple mobs," thing. I think that's dangerous. Easy, but dangerous.