The Glade 4.0

Rand has...repeatedly [said] that he would not have voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 on libertarian grounds: private businesses should not be forced to serve African Americans if they so choose. Presumably, market pressure will eventually force them to be more accommodating. If it doesn't, then so be it, Rand believes....As we know from history, the free market did not lead to a breakdown of segregation. Indeed, it got much worse, not just because it was enforced by law but because it was mandated by self-reinforcing societal pressure. Any store owner in the South who chose to serve blacks would certainly have lost far more business among whites than he gained. There is no reason to believe that this system wouldn't have perpetuated itself absent outside pressure for change.

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.

...If Rand Paul were saying that he agrees with the Goldwater-Rehnquist-Bork view that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was unconstitutional and that the Supreme Court was wrong to subsequently find it constitutional, that would be an eccentric but defensible position. If he were saying that the Civil Rights Act were no longer necessary because of the great strides we have made as a country in eradicating racism, that would also be defensible. But Rand's position is that it was wrong in principle in 1964. There is no other way of interpreting this except as an endorsement of all the things the Civil Rights Act was designed to prohibit, as favoring the status quo throughout the South that would have led to a continuation of segregation and discrimination against African Americans at least for many more years. Undoubtedly, changing mores would have broken down some of this over time, but there is no reason to believe that it would have been quick or that vestiges wouldn't still remain today. Indeed, vestiges remain despite the Civil Rights Act.

I don't believe Rand is a racist; I think he is a fool who is suffering from the foolish consistency syndrome that affects all libertarians. They believe that freedom consists of one thing and one thing only--freedom from governmental constraint. Therefore, it is illogical to them that any increase in government power could ever expand freedom. Yet it is clear that African Americans were far from free in 1964 and that the Civil Rights Act greatly expanded their freedom while diminishing that of racists.

[It] is the height of stupidity to decry the "private property" implications of the Civil Rights Act...when a major goal of the legislation was to overturn state laws that overwhelmingly restrained the economic advancement of a group of people who were once classified as private property....The Pauls seem to concede to the validity of the Act's overturning of discrimination in public settings, such as transportation. But why aren't they -- as libertarians -- outraged that Jim Crow laws themselves infringed on private property and free exchange of goods? Jim Crow said whites and blacks couldn't eat together or live in the same hotels. If you were a white restaurant owner and wanted to serve blacks, you could be shut down. Once again, Jim Crow prevented whites and blacks from engaging in a basic economic relationship. That is the power of the state at its worst. And Rand Paul calls such a reality "obscure"?

...It's one thing for conservatives to regularly force a reconsideration of major economic issues. It's legitimate to wonder if every part of the New Deal -- or Great Society -- should stay in place. But dismissing the Civil Rights Act -- without at least recognizing that the pre-Act status quo ante was an obscene era for freedom in the United States that required some sort of federal action -- is intellectually immoral and politically stupid.

What's most troubling about this interview is not that Paul opposes a portion of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, it's that it's clear Paul hasn't thought much about his position. Lacking a rigorous intellectual framework for his opposition, Paul is wobbly on defense. So what you see, in the main, is Paul trying to change the subject--at one point, I think he actually asks (rhetorically), "Am I a bad person?" But Paul never settles down and to make the argument. Rachel Maddow repeatedly raises lunch counters, and it would have really pleased me if Paul had just made the case for private sector discrimination. Frankly, I can see the outlines of the argument and am not totally unsympathetic to it....But what about red-lining? Does Paul know anything about blockbusting? Does he think banks should be able to have a policy of not lending to black businesses? Does he think real-estate agents should be able to discriminate? Does he think private homeowner groups should be able to band together and keep out blacks? Jews? Gays? Latinos?

...While I'm basically a West Baltimore cosmopolitan now, I remain convinced that you can't make people love you. When I wake up in the morning to write, I don't think about how I can make the world "less racist." I think racism is a cancer, but I also believe in having the argument. I wonder about Brown vs. the Board. I wonder about housing desegregation in Detroit during the 50s, even as I have no better solutions. What I'm driving at is raising the question about methods is never wrong, to the contrary it's essential. That process is undermined by people who raise those questions, without having thought about them, without being able to speak to their nuances, and are mostly concerned with tribal signaling. People were dragged from their homes, raped and murdered over civil rights. Talk about it, by all means. But talk about it with the intellectual seriousness it deserves.This is not a third grade science fair project.

In that vein, here is the best response I saw in comments:

I am glad he will be more integrated into the American conversation. I don't agree with Paul on the Civil Rights Act because I believe that the legacy of slavery and segregation made a drastic and historic redress morally vital for this country's coherence, integrity and unity. But was the Act in many respects an infringement of freedom? Of course it was. To bar private business owners from discriminating in employment would have been an unthinkable power for the federal government for much of American history. Now it's accepted as inevitable for almost everyone who can claim to be treated unjustly for an aspect of their identity irrelevant to a job. What I believe was a necessary act to redress a uniquely American historic evil became a baseline for every minority group with a claim to grievance.

To my mind, this is settled law and should remain that way. But it is not without cost to liberty (as I argued in Virtually Normal). And a real libertarian will feel some qualms about it. Not because they are racists or homophobes (although some may be). But because a truly principled defense of individual freedom will inevitably confront the huge role government now plays in policing fairness in what were once entirely unfair private transactions. You could argue, and I would agree, that the Act expanded freedom immensely overall. But you have to concede, I think, that it also restricted freedom for a few....There was a very solid constitutional case against the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which was why Goldwater opposed it. But as an empirical matter, I think the history of race in America proves the inadequacy of pure freedom to redress the darkest of human impulses - to own, torture and terrorize an entire race.

...Worse, Paul's entirely abstract intellectual argument wrests pure principles out of an actual society, with actual historical atrocities, violence, oppression and contempt. That's why I cannot be a libertarian the way some others like Paul are. I do not believe you can reify an abstraction like liberty and separate it from the context - historical, cultural, moral - in which it lives and breathes and from which it emerged. I can believe in freedom and believe in equality of opportunity but I should be mature enough to see when there has to be a compromise between the two - and decide. On the issue of race in America, the libertarian right was proven wrong - morally, empirically wrong. Giving up the ancient and real freedom to discriminate was worth it - indeed morally and politically necessary for America to regain its soul.

This is what makes the tea-party movement un-conservative. It is dealing with the world as it would like it to be, not as it is. It has an almost adolescent ideal it cannot compromise. I think that makes the movement, in its more serious incarnation (like Paul), a useful addition to the public debate, especially in reminding the GOP of some core principles it threw away under Bush and Cheney. But all this makes the movement simultaneously unready and unworthy for government.

Again, I don't necessarily agree with every sentiment expressed above, but I think the writers do a good job of critiquing Paul's view in compelling ways.

19 Yet she became more and more promiscuous as she recalled the days of her youth, when she was a prostitute in Egypt. 20 There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses.

I think he is a fool who is suffering from the foolish consistency syndrome that affects all libertarians. They believe that freedom consists of one thing and one thing only--freedom from governmental constraint. Therefore, it is illogical to them that any increase in government power could ever expand freedom. Yet it is clear that African Americans were far from free in 1964 and that the Civil Rights Act greatly expanded their freedom while diminishing that of racists.

You mean strawmanning him in a desperate political attack that has no actual merit?

That's exactly the position he expressed, and it's exactly the position the authors I linked are criticizing.

Lots of historical revision in those articles. Good grief. Some of it doesn't even agree with the textbook for the class I finished this semester and it was so sympathetic to the plight of the black man some chapters pretty much only focused on that.

Facism is not a school of thought, it is a racial slur.

Lots of historical revision in those articles.

Facism is not a school of thought, it is a racial slur.

RangerDave:

Does there exist a right of free association?

Absolutely, Khross, and that's why this has always been a tough issue for me to decide on. Even before getting into the Constitutional arguments, on the level of core principles, I think it's extremely important for individuals to be free to choose who they interact with in any given capacity.

However, as some of the articles I linked point out, government is not the only means by which people's choices can be restricted. The realities of life in the South during the Jim Crow era were such that widespread and often violent discrimination would have continued to exist for quite some time even absent the laws formally supporting segregation.

So, the ban on businesses discriminating decreased the amount of freedom people had from government restrictions, but it simultaneously increased the amount of freedom people had from societal restrictions and criminal violence. On balance, I think it's pretty clear the overall amount of freedom and well-being went up. As a result, I'm torn between this "net effects" argument and the idea that government restrictions in particular need to be guarded against. Nevertheless, I'm inclined to agree with Sullivan's argument that these things have to be considered in the societal context within which they occur. In today's world, I'd probably oppose a ban on private discrimination, but I think the particularly reprehensible and persistent problems of the Jim Crow era justified a more intrusive government response.

Facism is not a school of thought, it is a racial slur.

If if the government were forcing everyone to accept anyone, regardless of color, why is it that The Masters had to change it's rule (it's own choice) when Tiger Wood won? Prior to that Blacks weren't allowed in the club.

Facism is not a school of thought, it is a racial slur.

That's rather incongruous with your posting history. I would add, and I'll explain more in response, you support the right to free association only inasmuch as it conforms to your personal expectations of behavior and egalitarian access to other people's time and efforts. Indeed, your support of the recent Health Care Reform Act, indicates such a breach of said right. But that's a rather complex situation in an of itself. You undeniably refuse a doctor's right to choose who he or she treats on the grounds that you believe health care services are a right: consequently, you implicitly support the notion that someone can demand such services of a person who chooses to practice medicine. That said ...I think you grossly misunderstand the South and much of the history of the Twentieth Century. Indeed, it's a curious thing that the South is so often castigated on this issue, when it persisted for far longer and in far more sinister manners North of the Mason Dixon line. To this day, in point of fact, lingering ethnic segregation affects the demographics of New York City and Boston, or other metropolitan areas considered to be some of the most liberal in the country. In worrying so much about how the South conducted its business, the North turned a collective blind eye to very practices in its own back yard. After all, Malcolm Little was from Michigan and spent the majority of his adult life in Boston and New York City. And his experience was no less marked by rampant racism and ethnocentricism than that of Martin Luther King, Jr. or Rosa Parks. Which leads me to another curious question: How many Southern states banned inter-racial marriage prior to 1828?
I disagree. Government intrusion merely exacerbated the situation politicization by trying to regulate an innate human desire to spend time with people like one's self. Regardless of the problems with Southern Law and Northern Practice, all the Civil Rights Act did was slow the social shift to a more equitable and less ethnically hindered social state. The direct results, both politically and intellectually, are multi-culturalism and wide-spread "reverse discrimination". Or, to be more precise, in seeking to accelerate racial tolerance, the U.S. Federal government entrenched our entire society in the post-colonial quagmire of identity politics. Rather than letting people be people and come to terms with the differences of their own accord, we mandated accepted at an individual level. And we've another 40 years of political history that indicates it hasn't worked.

Fixing the law and administrative mechanisms of the states or localities, across the nation, was one thing. But going so far as to tell people who they had to serve and associate with was too much. It gave legitimacy to ethnic separation, which has become a business unto itself. Of course, I find it amusing that in our haste to become more like Europe, we also ignore exactly how xenophobic a place it really is.

In comic strips the person on the left always speaks first. - George Carlin

That's a ridiculous statement, Ladas.

So now we get government intrusion that enshrines the same activity and mindset, but because its opposite, its ok?

That's a ridiculous statement, Ladas.

Which part?

Facism is not a school of thought, it is a racial slur.