Rand Paul Says What?
Posted by dpolitico on May 20, 2010 · View Comments
I’ll be the first to admit I don’t know much about Rand Paul. I’ve gleamed a few things here and there. Tea Party… less spending… not part of the old guard GOP… not named after Ayn Rand… thinks blacks should be denied service at restaurants…
Say what?
In a bit of political philosophizing gone too far Rand Paul dug himself a hole he didn’t even know he was in on the Rachel Maddow show. He was so intent on not letting her play gotcha that he defended his legal position into the grave. Witness the following exchange (video on the right):
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…
Maddow:… How about desegregating lunch counters?
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…
Maddow: Well, it was pretty practical to the people who had the life nearly beaten out of them trying to desegregate Walgreen’s lunch counters despite these esoteric debates about what it means about ownership. This is not a hypothetical Dr. Paul.
Paul certainly doesn't strike me as a constitutional scholar based on this conversation. He is a doctor with ideas about what he thinks the law should be but not what it actually allows. The government has greater leeway in regulating commercial speech and public safety, thus the first amendment argument regarding private establishments doesn't really hold much water. Everyone's rights have to be balanced against each others and the constitution insures that the law that is in the best interest of the general welfare triumphs.
I digress. What's really great about this Maddow / Paul exchange is that someone is actually arguing something that is politically incorrect. It's so abhorrent, it's thrilling. Paul is now back peddling like crazy and taking back what he said, and that’s too bad. If he really wants to make the argument that the civil rights acts were an overreach, go for it! Let’s get real public discourse again instead of the bullshit slanted crap that every other politician gives us.
And one more thing. FWIW: When you’re aligning yourself with a party that’s already been maligned with allegations of shouting racial epithets at black Congressmen, the last thing you probably want to do is argue that a restaurant should turn someone away because of the color of their skin.
