Rand Paul's "Outreach"

Commenting on Rand Paul's address at Howard University, Andrew Sullivan wrote yesterday:

"I have to say the sheer lack of any grace among some liberal commenters on what was an obvious outreach to African-Americans depresses me." Sullivan thinks critics have been "too harsh" and that Paul deserves some credit for his criticism of the drug war.

Sorry, but the fact that Paul had one idea that might actually benefit some part of the black community does not mean he gets a pass on the rest of that address.

Like his father, Rand Paul often does get a pass because of the evident sincerity of his beliefs. Sincerity is certainly refreshing among politicians and to be lauded when it appears. But I find it hard to believe Paul was being sincere at Howard University.

I wrote nearly three years ago in the aftermath of his infamous interview with Rachel Maddow, "I believe Paul is sincere when he says he has no racial animus." I still believe that (that some people seem to think this in itself is notable and commendable is a sad commentary in and of itself).

But when confronted with that interview by a questioner at Howard, Paul disputed that he had ever "wavered in my support for civil rights or the Civil Rights Act." That is simply not true. He is on record opposing the part of the act that applies to privately owned businesses.

He believes that restaurant owners ought not to discriminate against black customers because it is bad business, but he does not believe government should make that illegal. He opposes that part of the Civil Rights Act (and a not insignificant part it is). But he did not have the integrity to say that at Howard. He lied instead.

Paul was also asked by a questioner: "Are we discussing the Republican Party of the 19th century or are we discussing the post-1968 Republican Party?" His response was either dishonest or stunningly ignorant: "The argument I'm trying to make is we haven't changed," he said.

Paul completely ignored the history of the "southern strategy," with which the questioner was clearly familiar. Even when asked about it, Paul simply denied it. Instead he said: "the Republican Party has always [emphasis added] been the party of civil rights and voting rights."

There can be no true Republican "outreach" or "re-branding" on civil rights unless the party ends its denial and confronts and forthrightly repudiates its history since the Civil Rights Act. The undeniable truth is that the GOP made a conscious, deliberate decision to exploit the white backlash against that law, and has been reaping political benefits among some white voters ever since.

Also on the topic of Republican re-branding, one aspect of Paul's address has gotten relatively little attention: the way he revealed that he basically shares Mitt Romney's 47% mindset and Paul Ryan's "makers and takers" rhetoric.

After extolling the largely positive civil rights record of the Republicans through the 1950s, Paul did attempt to explain why the GOP lost African-Americans. His explanation is the same as Romney's for why he lost the last election: the Democrats bought black votes:

"I think what happened during the Great Depression was that African Americans understood that Republicans championed citizenship and voting rights but they became impatient for economic emancipation.... The Democrats promised equalizing outcomes through unlimited federal assistance while Republicans offered something that seemed less tangible-the promise of equalizing opportunity through free markets."

"Equalizing outcomes through unlimited federal assistance." The Democrats bought your votes, he effectively said, by offering you free stuff. And, unfortunately, African-Americans somehow have failed to see the "less tangible" benefits of Republican policies. He seems blissfully unaware of how insulting that argument is.

He also plays a cynical game. He tries to turn his brand of libertarianism into the instrument of black liberation, by equating his aversion to federal power in general with the African-American opposition to the abuse of power by the states of the Jim Crow South.

"The history of African-American repression in this country rose from government-sanctioned racism." That much is true.

"Jim Crow laws were a product of bigoted state and local governments." Also true.

"Big and oppressive government has long been the enemy of freedom, something black Americans know all too well."

Not true.

It was not "big" government that brought about Jim Crow. It was oppressive small governments. It was an empowered, big, federal government that proved to be the only institution in America able to end Jim Crow. African Americans know that, even if Rand Paul pretends to be naively unaware of it. His blinkered view of freedom is one that, had it ruled the day in 1964, would have left intact the daily insults to the dignity of every African American, as long as the perpetrators were private individuals and businesses. The audience at Howard knew that too.

Paul also showed an appalling ignorance of the Constitution: "The bill of rights and the civil war amendments," he said, "protect us against the possibility of an oppressive federal or state government." It makes no sense to conflate the Bill of Rights and the Reconstruction Amendments. The first ten amendments all limit the federal government, but the 13th, 14th, and 15th all empower the federal government. And it was that empowerment that made possible the final abolition of slavery, the temporary civil rights advances of the Reconstruction era, and eventually, the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts.

People who do not wear the kind of ideological blinders permanently attached to Paul know that federal power is neither inherently good nor inherently bad. It depends on circumstances, on how it is employed. But that seems too confusing for the simplistic libertarian mind to wrap itself around. It is so much easier to just flatly deny any historical reality that contradicts your infallible ideology. And then condescendingly tell other people, who know all too well that historical reality, that they have simply failed to appreciate your truth because your ideas "seemed less tangible."

Rand Paul had barely begun his speech when he effectively congratulated himself for giving it: "Some have said that I’m either brave or crazy to be here today." Andrew Sullivan may be more inclined to the former, but if Rand Paul honestly thinks the message he gave at Howard was true "outreach" that will win over many African American voters, I'm inclined toward the latter.

The Anti-Wisconsin Idea

The first time the state of Wisconsin comes up in my U.S. history survey classes is when I reach the section on the Progressive movement.  You can’t really discuss the reforms of the early twentieth century without giving due credit to the leading role of Wisconsin.  The reforming spirit of that state, represented in politics by the LaFolletes, became a model for the nation.  Today, Republicans all over America are trying to turn it into another, and quite different, kind of model.

A hundred years ago, the “Wisconsin Idea” was shorthand for a whole series of reforms, most of which we take for granted today.  It meant more direct democracy, a response to the wholesale corruption of state politics in the U.S. during the rise of big business in the late 19^th century.  More democratic institutions, progressives hoped, would also produce more enlightened economic policies, and end the stranglehold trusts had over the economic life of the nation.

The direct primary (which allowed voters, not party bosses, to pick nominees) and the direct election of senators (which allowed voters, not state legislators, to pick senators) were two major political parts of the Wisconsin idea. Economically, it meant things like workers’ compensation and business regulation.

Wisconsin was in the reforming vanguard in the late 19^th century.  As early as the 1880s, Wisconsin was passing worker safety and child labor laws.  In 1895, as southern states were institutionalizing segregation, Wisconsin outlawed racial discrimination in public accommodations like restaurants (which is the part of the Civil Rights of 1964 that Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky today still thinks is unconstitutional).

Today, Gov. Scott Walker is trying to put Wisconsin in the vanguard again, but this time with an anti-progressive agenda.  Walker’s controversial proposals to strip collective bargaining rights for state unions may be unique by virtue of the week-long protests they have provoked.  But other states are pursuing similar anti-union agendas: The states of Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, New Jersey, among others, are experiencing similar attempts to use state fiscal crises as vehicles to disempower unions.

This is no coincidence.  It is part and parcel of the Republican Party’s anti-government mentality that has been a dominant theme of theirs for over thirty years.  If government is bad, then government employees are bad. 

This is the proper context for understanding Speaker John Boehner’s Marie Antoinette moment last week.  Boehner responded to the fact that budget cuts would mean that federal employees would lose their jobs by saying “if some of those jobs are lost in this, so be it.  We're broke. It's time for us to get serious about how we're spending the nation's money."

Similar comments are being made in Wisconsin.  At Saturday’s counter-protest, Tea Party activist Herman Cain said: "Wisconsin is broke. My question for the other side is, 'What part of broke don't you understand?'"

Wisconsin is not broke, and neither is the U.S.  Wisconsin’s current budget deficit is less than the amount of pro-business tax breaks just generously handed out by the Republicans. As for the U.S. budget, as “a share of the nation's economy, Uncle Sam's take this year will be the lowest since 1950, when the Korean War began.”  And yet Republicans insist our budget deficit is entirely due to spending, not to lack of tax revenue.

Yes, both the federal and state governments have real budgetary problems.  But Wisconsin’s unions have agreed to the financial sacrifices, and are only insisting on the maintenance of their bargaining rights.  (Don’t be fooled when Walker says they will keep those rights—the legislation takes away bargaining rights over working conditions and caps the ability to negotiate salaries to the inflation rate.  In other words, unions will never actually gain ground.  At best, they will tread water; at worst, fall behind.)

Yes, unions are imperfect instruments, and could use reform of their own.  But the political reality is that unions are being scapegoated by Republicans for our current economic ills.  Unions did not gamble billions of dollars on financial shell games and ruin the economy.  Financial institutions did, but you don’t see them being called on by the GOP to sacrifice.  You see them bailed out, and, unrepentant, you see them going back to business as usual and awarding themselves unconscionable bonuses. 

When the Republicans start calling business out and demand that they contribute to solving our economic problems, then I’ll take them seriously.  Until then, this anti-“Wisconsin idea” is simply an attack on government workers and union rights and an attempt to turn back the clock and restore the laissez-faire world of the late 19^th century.

14th Nervous Breakdown

My last post noted that the coverage of the Delaware senate debates had unfairly characterized Christine O'Donnell's comments on the First Amendment.  Perhaps even more egregious, however, was the lack of attention given to another of O'Donnell's answers to a constitutional question.

O'Donnell was asked in the same debate if she agrees with calls by other Tea Party candidates to repeal all or part of the 14th, 16th, and 17th Amendments to the Constitution.  O'Donnell was quick to deny any interest in repealing the 17th amendment—which is not a bad idea for someone running for senate, since it is the amendment that gave the voters, rather than state legislators, the right to choose senators. (For an earlier discussion of this issue, see here.)

What is noteworthy is the rest of O'Donnell's response.  She did not know what either the 14th or 16th Amendments were.  Laughing nervously, she said: “I’m sorry, I didn’t bring my Constitution with me.”  Doing her best impression of Sarah Palin, she tried to laugh off her ignorance and quipped: “Fortunately, senators don’t have to memorize the Constitution. Can you remind me of what the other ones are?"

That's true enough, memorizing the Constitution isn't a requirement for office.  But when you premise your candidacy in large part on your superior fidelity to the Constitution, is it too much to ask that you know what is actually in it?

After all, these are hardly the most obscure amendments.  I'll admit that I don't have all the amendments committed to memory either.  I could not tell you off the top of my head what, say, the 8th Amendment says (it bans excessive bail and cruel and unusual punishment).  But these two I know, as should someone like O'Donnell who self-identifies with the Tea Party.

The 16th empowered Congress to levy the income tax, the relevance of which to Tea Partiers is self-evident.  And the 14th Amendment has been much in the news, ever since Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) proposed repealing its provision for birth citizenship.

But the 14th Amendment does far more than that.  It arguably represents the most important single change in the Constitution in American history.  It made clear that the states did not have the power to deny citizens any of the rights guaranteed by the Constitution.  It guarantees all of us due process rights and equal protection of the laws.

It was, in many ways, an answer to the states rights doctrine of the Confederacy, and it created one nation.  As Eric Foner writes in his authoritative account Reconstruction, 1863-1877, some amendments

are broad statements of principle, giving constitutional form to the resolution of national crises, and permanently altering American nationality.  The Fourteenth Amendment was a measure of this kind.  In language that transcended race and region, it challenged legal discrimination throughout the nation and changed and broadened the meaning of freedom for all Americans.

The reason that this amendment is so important, and the reason some radical conservatives might not be entirely comfortable with it, is that in the words of a contemporary observer, "the powers of the States have been limited and the powers of Congress extended."  It meant that the states "could no longer infringe upon the liberties the Bill of Rights has secured against federal violation."

Although it took nearly another one hundred years, the foundation established by the 14th Amendment is what made possible the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (whose constitutionality has been challenged by another Tea Party candidate, Rand Paul).

It is bad enough that a senatorial candidate today could be ignorant of what the 14th Amendment is.  It is even worse that a sitting senator from one of the states whose wholesale disregard of civil rights prompted it in the first place is proposing that we tamper with this essential amendment.  But worst of all is the fact that, in this bizarre election year, neither of these things seems to merit any notice at all (much less outrage) from the electorate.

Whigging Out? Christine O'Donnell v. Rand Paul

In my last post, I noted the similarities between the rhetoric of today's Tea Party and the Jacksonian Democrats of the 1830s and 1840s, while noting that some recent nominees claiming the Tea Party mantle, like Christine O'Donnell, complicate that picture. Many of the people who cast themselves in that role of Tea Party candidate don't always conform to the primarily fiscally conservative, small government positions of a Rand Paul. Candidates like O'Donnell who also adopt religiously informed policies not only break with the Jacksonian model, they expose the potential difficulty in turning the Tea Party into a coherent political force, and the problem that poses for the Republicans.

The Democratic Party's opposition in the 1830s and 1840s was the Whig Party.  Where the Democrats wanted small government, the Whigs favored an active federal government.   In their 1844 platform, they stated forthrightly their position: "The Whig party have always been distinguished from their opponents by the attribution of a beneficent and protective power to government."  Mostly, that meant their programs of a national bank and internal improvements (what we would call infrastructure).

There was another side to the Whigs, however.  They were also the party of religious evangelicals and moral reformers, and the followers of Jackson objected as much to that as to their economic program. Jackson biographer Robert Remini writes: "Democrats portrayed Whigs as bigoted and self-righteous religious fanatics intent on imposing their ethical values on others."

The Democrats, by contrast, were the party of what passed for "diversity" in those days. In the words of Daniel Walker Howe, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in History for What God Hath Wrought,  the Oxford History of the United States for the period 1815-1848 (who will also be the Lewis P. Jones Visiting Professor of History at Wofford College this coming spring), the Democrats "hoped America would remain culturally (that is, morally) heterogeneous, so that a variety of religious options could be exercised."

So a candidate like Christine O'Donnell, who made her name in religiously inspired organizations such as the Concerned Women for America, whose goal is to "bring Biblical principles into all levels of public policy" and SALT, the Savior's Alliance for Lifting the Truth, on some level more resembles a Whig than a Jacksonian.  O'Donnell has claimed that she has "heard the audible voice of God" guiding her politically, and she has a simple, black and white view of morality: "There's only truth and not truth.  You're either very good or evil."

Compare O'Donnell's record to Rand Paul's college exploits, involving marijuana use and worshipping the "Aqua Buddha."  While attending Baylor University, Paul allegedly belonged to a "'secret society' called the NoZe Brotherhood. The society was 'a refuge for atypical Baylor students' and enjoyed needling the school's administration and its piousness."  Can you get more pious than Christine O'Donnell?

Can we really call both of these people Tea Party candidates? Does the label mean anything coherent if it applies to both? Social and religious conservatives like O'Donnell dilute the economic message that Tea Party front men like Dick Armey want to emphasize in this election cycle, when the most important issue is the weak economy.  And libertarians like Rand Paul threaten to alienate the religious conservatives within the Republican Party.

The problem for the Republican Party is that it cannot afford to disown or alienate the religious wing that has been a key to its electoral successes at least since Ronald Reagan.  Reagan's two landslide victories in 1980 and 1984 forged a coalition of fiscal and religious conservatives which has never been entirely reconcilable since the Great Communicator left the political stage.  In the years since, the Republicans have been most successful when they have managed to bridge the gap between the two.  But that means tempering the extremes, and the Tea Party's greatest success this primary season has been to accentuate the extremes, giving us candidates such as O'Donnell and Paul.  The establishment did not choose either O'Donnell in Delaware and Paul in Kentucky, but the party is stuck with them.  If by chance they both wind up in the Senate, those unresolved tensions in the Republican Party may burst forth like never before.

New Hickory?

Look to the city of Washington and let the virtuous patriots of the country weep at the spectacle.  There corruption is springing into existence, and fast flourishing…. We are not as we once were; the people are slumbering at their posts; virtue is on the wane; and the republican principles with which we set out, are fast declining.

Sounds like Glenn Beck, doesn't it?  It's not.  It's a plea by John Eaton, a supporter of Andrew Jackson, urging voters to elevate the general to the presidency in 1824.

I've been thinking a lot about the proper historical analogy for the Tea Party, and I've been leaning lately toward the Jacksonian Democrats of the early to mid 19th century. (Though, as I plan to explore in a future post, the candidacy of Christine O'Donnell throws a monkey wrench into the comparison.  Previous posts on the Tea Party are here and here. )

The Tea Party, to the extent that it represents any coherent political philosophy, seems to be about a return to an idealized past, when Americans held to original constitutional principles, government was small, taxes were low, and freedom was unfettered.  They claim the Revolutionary generation as their inspiration.  That's quite similar to the ideology of the Democratic Party from the 1820s through the 1840s.

Compare the Tea Party to one Jacksonian's description of Democratic ideology: "[It] may be summed up in this brief formula.  As little government as possible; that little emanating from, and controlled by, the people."

The Jacksonian Democrats opposed both big government and big business, because they believed that any government action created privilege, and the wealthiest and most powerful would be the beneficiaries of all such government action. Thus, they thought, the government could best serve the cause of equality by doing as little as possible.

The Jacksonians championed, as every student of American history knows, "the common man."  They portrayed themselves as the regular people, rising up to regain control of their government from corrupt elites, and Jackson was their man:

He has drawn the just distinction between those classes of society that labor and those that do not; those that earn their living by the sweat of their brow and constitute the bone and muscle of the country, defending it in war and supporting it in peace, and those who live by interest in their stocks.

Supporters praised Jackson for his "devotion to the cause of liberty," for "stand[ing] aloof from all the contemptible intrigue … of the day."  He was the one who would reverse the "dangerous trends of the modern age" and "restore the cherished values of old."

But that isn't the only similarity to today's Tea Party.  Jackson and his supporters shared the conspiratorial, even paranoid, mindset of today's Tea Partiers.  As Jackson's biographer Robert Remini writes, Jackson spoke "incessantly about intrigue and corruption and fraud … he expressed the conspiracy in terms of an aristocracy seeking power to pursue their own selfish ends."

The irony is that while most Tea Partiers likely share that fear of wealthy elites (the opposition to "bailouts" is evidence enough of that), many of the organizations that are seizing the Tea Party brand are in fact funded by those same wealthy elites, people like the Koch brothers.  Candidates like Rand Paul may speak the libertarian lingo of the early 19th century, but in a modern economy, that 19th century ideology actual serves the economic elite, not the common man.

The late 19th century proved the inadequacy of the Jacksonian approach.  Left unregulated, big business amassed unparalleled, unchecked economic power.  Progressives like Theodore Roosevelt understood that only by using democratic government as a check on that economic power could liberty be preserved.

The New York State Democratic platform in 1844 stated: "It is the aristocracy of wealth we have to fear, and that is the only aristocracy from which danger is to be apprehended." In that pre-industrial age, the economic elites were pikers compared to today's billionaires, but the point remains.

Today it is only the regulatory structure and social safety net that progressives have built over the last century that keeps the aristocracy of wealth in check.  By supporting candidates who would undo that structure, candidates funded secretively by today's aristocracy of wealth, today's Tea Party supporters may well empower the very forces that the Jacksonians so adamantly opposed.

Rand Paul and the Ghost of Richard Nixon

One of the saddest parts of watching Rachel Maddow's interview with Rand Paul was seeing his honest perplexity at the idea that anyone could think that his view of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 indicated any racist proclivities on his part. As I said in my last post, I believe Paul is sincere when he says he has no racial animus. But this is what happens when a political naif and ideologue ventures unthinkingly into America's racial past.

Paul's big mistake was thinking that his libertarian views on the primacy of property rights could be separated from the intent of the Civil Rights Act. In a perfect world, that would be possible. In the fallen world of American political history, it is not.

Paul may not realize it, but in this case he has been haunted by the ghost of Richard Nixon. In 1968, the Nixon campaign subtly exploited the fact that LBJ had made the Democrats the party of civil rights to attract white votes. The so-called "Southern Strategy" became part and parcel of the political realignment that began with the passage of the Civil Rights Act, and it ultimately helped to convert the "solid South" from reliably Democratic to predictably Republican.

But it didn't begin there. The first presidential election after the passage of the act was just months later, between LBJ and Barry Goldwater, the Republican senator from Arizona who voted against the Civil Rights Act. As Sam Tanenhaus notes in a fine article in the New York Times, Rand Paul used almost verbatim Barry Goldwater's 1964 defense of his opposition to the Civil Rights Act. While Goldwater may not have intended people to take his opposition to the act as opposition to civil rights, many people did. In an election when over 60% of the general public voted for LBJ, Goldwater won six states. (By contrast, in 1984, when Ronald Reagan got 58.8% of the vote, his opponent Walter Mondale won only his home state of Minnesota.) In addition to his home state of Arizona, Goldwater also won five states of the deep South: South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana. Interestingly, of those six states, the margin of victory was smallest in his home state (50.4% to 49.5%), while in Mississippi he won a stunning 87% of the vote, and in Alabama nearly 70%.

While it is obvious that this sudden southern support for a Republican was due to his vote on the Civil Rights Act, it is just as obvious that a candidate cannot be held automatically responsible for why people vote for him. Goldwater's personal campaign rhetoric never indulged in race-baiting. But this campaign flyer, which urges a vote for Goldwater, explicitly stokes racial resentment. It shows a grim-faced white man, with the word "Fired" underneath, while a picture of a smiling black man appears over the word "Hired." The flyer falsely claims that the recently passed act means that whites could be fired for no reason and replaced with blacks: "you can lose your job because of Johnson's Civil Rights Bill. This your last chance. Vote to put an end to racial favoritism ... vote to protect your job ... your family ... your home." (The flyer anticipates by 26 years the infamous Jesse Helms "hands" ad from the 1990 senatorial campaign in North Carolina.) It ends with language that evokes what Paul has said: "Employers read this: This is your last chance to save your freedom to run your own business as you choose!"

Four years later, Nixon would more subtly stoke the same fears with the coded rhetoric of law and order, local control and states rights. He and the segregationist governor of Alabama, George Wallace, would get a combined total vote similar to what LBJ received just four years earlier. The Democratic candidate, vice-president Hubert Humphrey, aptly described Nixon as a perfumed version of Wallace. As he had done 16 years earlier with another demagogue, Joe McCarthy, Nixon in 1968 presented a smarter, more respectable face for some some raw and rancid views. And it worked.

This is the political cesspool Rand Paul waded into with his comments on the Civil Rights Act. That a man could rise to the position of major party nominee for U.S. Senator without understanding this history is enough reason to keep him out of the Senate.

Rand Paul, Ideologue

When Rand Paul, son of the libertarian congressman from Texas Ron Paul, won the Republican Party nomination for senator from Kentucky this week, he crowed that his victory was "a message from the Tea Party." I think he was right, but not in the way he meant.

Since he was thrust into the national spotlight Tuesday, Paul has been plagued by comments he has made about the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Because Paul has stated that he has problems with parts of the act, much of the debate this week has been over whether or not he is a racist, or anti-civil rights. This strikes me as fruitless. Paul has said he is not a racist and that he abhors segregation. Unless and until evidence to the contrary emerges, I think one must take Paul at his word.

What he has undeniably proven this week, however, is that he is narrow ideologue who has a tenuous grasp of history and reality. And that matters.

Paul's recent troubles began last month when the Louisville Courier-Journal asked him if he would have voted for the Civil Rights Act. Rather than a simple "yes," Paul explained his support for the anti-discrimination provisions of the bill insofar as they applied to public institutions like schools. The editors, hearing the qualification in his tone, asked "But?" Paul laughed and said, "You had to ask me the 'but'!" He went on to explain: "I don't like the idea of telling private businesses owners--I abhor racism, I think it's a bad business decision to ever exclude anybody from your restaurant. But at the same time I do believe in private ownership."

The clear implication of that statement, though Paul did not actually say the words, is that he does not believe government should have the power to tell businesses that they cannot discriminate.

Last Wednesday, in a Rachel Maddow interview that is well worth viewing in its entirety, Maddow repeatedly pressed Paul to answer that question directly, and he repeatedly refused to do so. Every time Maddow attempted to get a clear answer, Paul changed the subject. He said he was not "in favor of any discrimination." But that was not the question. The real question is this: does he believe businesses have the right to discriminate because their property rights trump a customer's right to be served without discriminatory bias based on race?

This Paul refused to answer. Much of the discussion of Paul this week has presented him as getting in trouble for speaking his mind, and to some extent that is true. But watching the Maddow interview, it is clear that while he did speak his mind initially to the Courier-Journal, now he is both reluctant to retract his earlier statement and determined not to restate it plainly and clearly because it will hurt him politically to do so. It is sad watching Paul's contortions as he tries both to remain true to his beliefs and not doom his candidacy at the same time. It is hard to tell if he is disingenuous or just incoherent.

For example, when pushed by Maddow, Paul tried to muddy the waters by making it a matter of free speech: "Do you want to abridge the First Amendment as well?" But speech is in no way abridged by the Civil Rights Act. A business owner could still legally say racist things. He just could not bar people from the business based on their race. The issue is not speech, but discriminatory behavior. Pressed again, Paul claimed that the same idea could restrict a restaurant owner from prohibiting guns in his restaurant. Paul seemed quite pleased with himself here, clearly thinking he had won the argument, because no liberal would want that. But he fails to see that once again, he is missing the point. No matter how much a person might like to carry a gun, it is not an indelible part of one's identity. A gun owner can leave a gun at home; carrying a gun is a behavior. A black person cannot leave black skin at home. The Civil Rights Act does not say a business owner cannot bar people based on behavior. That simple point is either beyond Paul's grasp, or he deliberately ignored it to try hide the real implications of his point of view.

Paul does not seem to really have the courage of his convictions. When pressed by Maddow on a specific part of our history, the sit-in movement that began when four black college students insisted on being served at a Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, Paul evaded. If he does not believe that government can tell a business owner not to discriminate, then he clearly believes that those sit-in protesters were wrong. But he won't say that. Now, I can sympathize with Paul's dilemma. I'm close to a free speech absolutist. I would hate to be on TV and have an interviewer quote all kinds of hateful speech and ask me to defend the right to say those hateful things. But that's what you must be willing to do if you believe in a principle.

Paul clearly believes that a property owner's rights trump an individual's right to be treated with basic human dignity in a business. He is entitled to that view. But it is a view that is, in my opinion, abhorrent. And since he knows that many voters will find it so, he tries to hide it. Instead he accused Maddow of "bring[ing] up something that is really not an issue." But he couldn't be more wrong.

At root, Paul objects to the regulation of private property for the public good, and no issue could be more relevant to government today. The question, he said, is this: "Does the owner of the restaurant own his restaurant or does the government own his restaurant?" This simplistic, either/or view explains a lot. In Paul's ideology, the moment government tells a business "you must" or "you shall not," the business ceases to be the owner's property. This is absurd on the face of it. Such an absolutist view of property rights is indicative of the libertarian fantasy that we can live in an 18th century style philosophical state of nature.

It is also the id of the Tea Party movement. It is the same silly assumption that lies behind the charge that the recent health care act is a "government takeover" of health care, and the latest lunacy, the claim that the financial reform bill passed this week in the Senate is a "government takeover" of the banking industry. Paul's beliefs represent the sincere expression of the irresponsible rhetoric Republican leaders have been indulging in for the last year and a half. The difference is Paul really believes it.

Rand Paul is truly a radical. While he has now stated that he would not support repeal of the Civil Rights Act (as if that were ever going to happen), it is clear that he would not only roll back the Great Society if he could, he would do the same to the New Deal and even the Progressive era when it comes to property rights. He is an ideologue who places theory above real world consequences. He seems to believe, the evidence of our actual history notwithstanding, that the problems of discrimination could have been solved by market forces because "it's a bad business decision to ever exclude anybody from your restaurant." He believes that government regulation is an unjustifiable restriction of property rights. Also this week, he called the Obama administration's criticism of BP over the disastrous oil spill in the gulf "un-American." Paul's comments on BP come from the same place as his reservations about the Civil Rights Act. And that's why his view of that 46 year-old piece of legislation is a real and relevant issue today.