Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Rand Paul: Taking America Back …

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… back to the pre-civil rights era. KY-SEN Republican nominee and Tea Party fave Rand Paul on NPR yesterday:

SIEGEL: You've said that business should have the right to refuse service to anyone, and that the Americans with Disabilities Act, the ADA, was an overreach by the federal government. Would you say the same by extension of the 1964 Civil Rights Act?

Dr. PAUL: What I've always said is that I'm opposed to institutional racism, and I would've, had I've been alive at the time, I think, had the courage to march with Martin Luther King to overturn institutional racism, and I see no place in our society for institutional racism.

SIEGEL: But are you saying that had you been around at the time, you would have – hoped that you would have marched with Martin Luther King but voted with Barry Goldwater against the 1964 Civil Rights Act?

Dr. PAUL: Well, actually, I think it's confusing on a lot of cases with what actually was in the civil rights case because, see, a lot of the things that actually were in the bill, I'm in favor of. I'm in favor of everything with regards to ending institutional racism. So I think there's a lot to be desired in the civil rights. And to tell you the truth, I haven't really read all through it because it was passed 40 years ago and hadn't been a real pressing issue in the campaign, on whether we're going for the Civil Rights Act.

SIEGEL: But it's been one of the major developments in American history in the course of your life. I mean, do you think the '64 Civil Rights Act or the ADA for that matter were just overreaches and that business shouldn't be bothered by people with the basis in law to sue them for redress?

Dr. PAUL: Right. I think a lot of things could be handled locally. For example, I think that we should try to do everything we can to allow for people with disabilities and handicaps. You know, we do it in our office with wheelchair ramps and things like that. I think if you have a two-story office and you hire someone who's handicapped, it might be reasonable to let him have an office on the first floor rather than the government saying you have to have a $100,000 elevator. And I think when you get to the solutions like that, the more local the better, and the more common sense the decisions are, rather than having a federal government make those decisions.

So, without all the misdirects, the answer to Siegel's question is No: Rand Paul does not support the ADA or the Civil Rights Acts. Alrighty then!

Is this outright racist/anti-disabled rhetoric? No. Does it demonstrate an overdetermined ideological inflexibility (aka political correctness), moral cluelessness, a lack of knowledge of history, an absence of compassion? Ya think?

So, is this the Tea Party position? Any comment on Dr. Paul's, uh, idiosyncratic views of civil rights from our oh-frabjous-day Tea Party Pals?

Surely, in light of the ascent of folks like Dr. Paul and our good pal Mark Williams … one has to rack one's brains to imagine why African-Americans (for instance) make up all of 1% of people who identify with the Tea Party.

Heh. Indeed. The Tea Party is right-wing PC, no more, no less.

Addendum: Bruce Bartlett puts the ideological inadequacy in a nutshell:

In short, the libertarian philosophy of Rand Paul and the Supreme Court of the 1880s and 1890s gave us almost 100 years of segregation, white supremacy, lynchings, chain gangs, the KKK, and discrimination of African Americans for no other reason except their skin color. The gains made by the former slaves in the years after the Civil War were completely reversed once the Supreme Court effectively prevented the federal government from protecting them. Thus we have a perfect test of the libertarian philosophy and an indisputable conclusion: it didn't work. Freedom did not lead to a decline in racism; it only got worse.

via Sullivan.

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Comments

  1. As a person with a disability, and a member of the MassDems Disability Outreach Committee, I am of course very sensitive to this issue. Make no mistake about it, the ADA (once administered by the current Governor of Massachusetts) is a civil rights issue.

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    p>No, Dr. Paul, an office on the first floor is NOT acceptable if it means excluding someone from fully reaching their potential. How is that person going to participate in the full range of activities that go on in an office setting?

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    p>As a society, we benefit from the inclusion of diversity. It is (or can be) our greatest source of strength. To that end, barriers must be removed. I am a firm believer in the societal model of disability. In other words, something is a disability only if our culture decrees it to be (not necessarily overtly; maybe simply be denying access to the 2nd floor, e.g.).

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    p>”I’m sorry, Dr. Einstein, you say you need a quiet office so you can think about cosmic issues? How is that going to benefit our bottom line? And, by the way, that last name of yours, that isn’t Jewish, is it?”

  2. Not to be mistaken for Jim Beam, or whatever the good doctor was sipping before the interview.

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    p>What exactly does he think MLK was marching for?  He would’ve marched, but fought the law King was marching for?  

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    p>What are they putting in these tea bags?

    <

    p>

  3. Ron Paul has an long history of race problems, as well, including his own paper that’s he’s sent out to thousands of people.

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    p>Anyone who doesn’t recognize the racism that runs rampant in Tea Party circles is blind. The Pauls, in the 2000s, may not be blatant racists, but they certainly suffer from the soft bigotry side of it… which is in many ways the most dangerous kind.  

    • What I could make of the “Ron Paul Revolution” back in 2008 does not seem to be the precursors to the Tea Party.  They seemed to be young libertarians who were also attracted by his having opposed the war.  I’m not convinced father and son have quite the same constituency.

        1. Ryan did not say “exactly the same;” he said “like.”

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        p>2.  Perhaps you missed this:

        Kirchick delved into the archives of monthly newsletters that have gone out — under different titles, but always in Paul’s name — regularly since 1978. Few of the newsletters, Kirchick reports, contain bylines, but they are often written in a first-person style apparently meant to suggest that Paul himself was the author. “Whoever actually wrote them, the newsletters I saw all had one thing in common,” Kirchick says. “They were published under a banner containing Paul’s name, and the articles (except for one special edition of a newsletter that contained the byline of another writer) seem designed to create the impression that they were written by him — and reflected his views. What they reveal are decades worth of obsession with conspiracies, sympathy for the right-wing militia movement, and deeply held bigotry against blacks, Jews, and gays.”

      • There are two major factions of Tea Partiers, IMO. You can really separate them into the Paulists and the Palinites. The Paulists are the original Tea Partiers. The Palinites are the crazy, rabid and tribal-like Tea Partiers who joined on, mostly driven by Fox News and Dick Armey IMO. In the media, they’re all sort of the same thing, but there are certainly key differences between the two… and I’d say it’s pretty evenly divided between those two groups.

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        p>As for the son appealing to a different constituency… definitely not. He’s got the same wing of the group as his Paps behind him — and in Kentucky, probably the whole shebang. Just listen to Rand Paul’s victory speech to get a sense of where he’s at with the Tea Party movement. Palin’s queen of her wing, Ron Paul’s King of his… Rand Paul’s the Prince Charming of that Wing. They seriously think Rand Paul’s their Barack Obama.  

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