Libertarians Round on Rand Paul.

Rand Paul has cancelled an appearance on Meet The Press, saying that he has clarified his stance regarding the Civil Rights Act and that he will be giving no more national interviews on the topic.

As Politico reporter Shira Toeplitz tweeted, "You know it's a rough day on campaign trail when you have to issue a statement that says you will not repeal Civil Rights Act of '64."

But many other libertarians have come out condemning what Rand Paul has said.

"I think Rand Paul is wrong about the Civil Rights Act," libertarian Cato Institute scholar Brink Lindsey wrote in an e-mail. "As a general matter, people should be free to deal or not deal with others as they choose. And that means we discriminate against those we choose not to deal with. In marrying one person, we discriminate against all others. Businesses can discriminate against potential employees who don't meet hiring qualifications, and they can discriminate against potential customers who don't observe a dress code (no shirt, no shoes, no service). Rand Paul is appealing to the general principle of freedom of association, and that general principle is a good one.

"But it has exceptions. In particular, after three-plus centuries of slavery and another century of institutionalized, state-sponsored racism (which included state toleration of private racist violence), the exclusion of blacks from public accommodations wasn't just a series of uncoordinated private decisions by individuals exercising their freedom of association. It was part and parcel of an overall social system of racial oppression," Lindsey said.

"Paul's grievous error is to ignore the larger context in which individual private decisions to exclude blacks were made."

Brink Lindsey is correct. Paul is ignoring the larger context in which this discrimination took place and is attempting to portray this as a series of decisions made by individual business owners.

His implication is that owners who discriminated would be punished by customers who disagreed with what they were doing taking their business elsewhere.

But that ignores the reality of what was occurring back then. It is just as true that the bar which admitted black custom could be punished by a boycott from white customers. And I have no doubt that this is what would have happened.

Majorities rarely give up their power easily, and they certainly don't willingly do so for persecuted minorities.

That's why we need laws. And that's why Rand Paul was 100% wrong in everything he said.

The Republicans now have a taste of what the Tea Party protesters have in store for them.

In the primary, Republican grandees had backed the moderate conservative Trey Grayson, the Kentucky Secretary of State, but he was overwhelmed by the anti-establishment sentiment stirred up by Tea Party activists.

A senior GOP figure described the party’s nightmare scenario predicted before the primary in which Mr Paul contaminated the Republican brand. “What we’ve seen in the last 24 hours is that the fear McConnell and many others had is already being realised,” he said.

Those comments will haunt Rand Paul for the rest of this campaign. And they deserve to. He might have thought that he was merely expressing an ideological belief, but - taken to the lengths he took it - what we all saw was a dangerous brand of extremism which would allow discrimination in the mistaken hope that the market would correct all.

UPDATE:





It's no wonder that he has stopped giving interviews when one looks at these two car crash clips.

He actually pleads, "Where's my honeymoon?" and defends BP by stating that "Accidents happen". Dear God, this guy is seriously not ready to have his views examined under a 24 hour media spotlight.

UPDATE II:



Joe Scarborough attempts to defend Rand Paul whilst admitting that he might not be ready for prime time.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: I will not mention any names, but I’ll just say one of the top conservative leaders in Washington, DC, not elected, but a real opinion-shaper, had two questions. First of all, how could he have been so stupid to have walked into this type of controversy? And secondly, this is part of a news story so I’m going to say it, what the hell was he doing on MSNBC? This isn’t an anti-MSNBC situation but you don’t find a whole lot of very liberal Democrats going on Fox News election night or the night after to do their victory lap. They’re wondering whether he’s ready for prime time.

Andrea Mitchell has called him "the gift that keeps on giving". As her guest points out, he's fast becoming the new Sarah Palin.

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Tags: Rand Paul, Civil Rights