Kentucky's Republican nominee for the open U.S. Senate seat, Rand Paul, in his best Ayn Rand objectivist viewpoint, concluded private businesses should have had the right to discriminate against anyone they choose.
Title two of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, with which Paul specifically takes issue, states: "Outlawed discrimination in hotels, motels, restaurants, theaters, and all other public accommodations engaged in interstate commerce; exempted private clubs without defining the term 'private.'"
Paul's remarks, consider this coming in 2010, bear stark similarity to Southern segregationists who opposed the civil rights legislation. Do such beliefs make Paul a racist or at least guilty of latent racism? No.
But Paul's statement does reveal the disconnect that exists whenever an individual is strictly beholden to an ideology, there will inevitably come a point where that philosophy is unable to confront reality.
Paul is not the only one guilty of committing this infraction; it is commonplace in America's public discourse, in particular in politics and religion. It is a pseudo fundamentalism designed more to garner support for one's belief than it is to be a practical life application.
Where has the certainty gone that was displayed at the 2008 Republican Convention as different speakers took to the podium to lead the chants of "Drill, baby, drill?" Since the BP PLC oil spill -- which is gushing thousands of barrels of oil daily into the Gulf of Mexico, making its way up the Atlantic coast and has now been officially labeled the worst spill in America's history -- there is just not the same market for "Drill, baby, drill" bumper stickers.
Paul's strict libertarian principles are reminiscent to those of the 1964 Republican presidential nominee, Barry Goldwater. While I doubt America was prepared emotionally to have had three presidents in a year, Goldwater's opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Act did not help his candidacy.
Goldwater's commitment to his ideological principles did not allow him to appreciate the most heroic display of patriotism of the 20th century, tainting him with the perception that he cared more about the victimizer's rights to dehumanize than the victim's rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Fundamentalist thinking is also popular among those who advocate for "strict constructionists" to serve on our courts. They claim to oppose judges who "legislate from the bench."
This assumes the Constitution is frozen in time. Whatever the words meant when the Constitution was ratified in the 18th century is what it must mean today. Strict constructionism is a nice, neat, and convenient thought but hardly realistic in a world that is constantly evolving.
When one sifts through the rhetoric, what we find is those who abhor so-called legislating from the bench are only opposed to rulings that go against their ideological philosophy.
I haven't heard many conservatives rail against the Supreme Court's recent Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that held corporate funding of independent political broadcasts in candidate elections cannot be limited under the First Amendment, blurring the constitutional line between corporation and the individual.
It is the feign boast of religious fundamentalism that has caused more harm than good in the world. Fundamentalist thinking void of context is how a strand of Christian doctrine found itself in support of the Crusades, African American chattel slavery, the Holocaust, Jim Crow segregation, and Apartheid.
Though so-called conservatives have proven better at turning a profit using this approach, fundamentalism is not exclusive of any political ideology.
The most vitriolic e-mails that I've received have originated from those dissenting who believe the truth exists solely within their ideology.
Lacking any intellectual curiosity, Paul clumsily proved in his exchange with MS-NBC's Rachel Maddow the more beholden one is to his or her ideology without examining the context severely risks looking ridiculous. To justify its argument, fundamentalism demands that one ignore certain realities.
In Paul's case, he had to ignore there was something passed called the 14th Amendment after the country went to war against itself that not only guaranteed due process and equal protection for anyone who was a born in this country or a naturalized citizen, but also diminished the authority of the 10th Amendment -- a favorite of those who like to cite the states' rights argument.
In our public discourse, fundamentalism represents a fool's gold that unrealistically offers conformity in a world that is unpredictable and contradictory.
Though it leads with the self-confidence of its absolutist beliefs, it tends to quickly wilt under the heat of reality.
Byron Williams is an Oakland pastor and syndicated columnist. He is the author of Strip Mall Patriotism: Moral Reflections of the Iraq War. E-mail him at byron@byronspeaks.com or visit his Web site byronspeaks.com.
Follow Byron Williams on Twitter: www.twitter.com/byronspeaks
"Paul's remarks... bear stark similarity to Southern segregationists who opposed the civil rights legislation [of 1964]. Do such beliefs [ie., State sanctioned racial segregation] make Paul a racist? No."
No..?!!
I'm still trying to figure out how you reach the conclusion that "belief in" [or more correctly said, "support for"] State sanctioned racial segregation does NOT make one a person whose ideology is derived from some distinction between two groups of people being "because the two groups are comprised of people from different races," a "racist."
RACIST, def: The belief that race accounts for differences in human character, abilities, or rights.
Your post is provocative, sir (you generate a lot of buzz because so much of your rhetoric contains provocative buzz words), but it is not logical; nor does it contain or defend any coherent thesis.
Really? he wants to turn back the clock to 1955. Want to try it?
Okay , let's try it.
1. Davis would be the first African American Democratic Candidate to ever win the party's nomination for Gov.
2. It also means, for the first time in Alabama and the NATION'S history, that TWO REPUBLICANS are running AGAINST each other in the Nov election for Gov....one as a Christian, Tea Party, Republican, and Artur Davis (a Republican at heart and in actions) who won the Democratic Parties Primary.
This man, who was a toddler when this essential law was passed in 1964, wears the hair shirt of the Libertarian Fundamentalist which his father and mother placed on him long before he ever knew what this law did, ... if indeed he does today! It can be seen among parents who isolate their children from society, teaching them precepts based on personal preference, but not the law. It can be seen among the supremacist militias who, clinging to the Second Amendment, foment violence with the end of undoing the very society the Constitution enables.
It is that contradictory, schizoid, thinking that is so frightening. How demented is their claim upon the mantle of Freedom provided by the Constitution, without embracing the inherent flexibility to allow it to evolve in service to our People and Nation! The latter was as much the intent of the founders as the Constitution itself. Before it was delivered to the People, the Constitution had been amended ten times! And it will be again, ... but not by the likes of these..
We're certainly opposed to narcissists unilaterally deciding that they know best and that certain parts of the Constitution are inconvenient and therefore to be ignored.
The 14th Amendment was criticized by Dr. Rand on the Russian Press just this week, for its lax provisions in granting citizenship to those born on these shores. He says he would change it, ... he and his little dog, Toto.
You have to stay up with the pace here, please. The professor was pointing to two individual instances where this fundie libertarian has decided the United States erred in its course.
How such a man faces the prospect of taking an oath of office in the Senate to uphold and defend a Constitution he openly despises, ... is a matter to be reconciled between him and his G0D. Without the oath, he will never be seated. With it, he will have proven himself a perjuror.
Except the real world is composed of a multitude of shades of gray and fascinating nuances and perplexing context. It keeps the rest of us thinking. Sometimes getting it wrong, but always thinking.
Not said then but needing saying: So far, what we have not seen is any particular reason to want to find out how this man would be as a Congressperson.
This is another dynasty thing. There is no way to imagine R.P. elected to Congress if his father was not already in Congress - and a man who has gotten a lot of attention for himself as a member of Congress, an amazing amount of attention for a Representative, really.
For example, when he enters a restaurant, he probably does not think: Oh, there is a black family. I wonder if the owner wants them there.
He may well just accept the presence of the black family much as anyone else as customers - with little notice or attention.
So he does not go further and then think: I wonder what those children would feel if they were not allowed in this place because they were black. Alternatively, I wonder what those parents would feel if their family was rejected from this place for being black, and it made the children feel bad.
He just does not think. If this man was elected to the Senate, he would be forced to think about many issues. Some would challenge his ideology. Either he would then have to be flexible and do what was right, or he would follow his ideology and make meanspirited or unfortunate decisions.
Unfortunately, many of our Congresspeople do the latter anyway. Whether motivated by money directly or the desire to keep all the advantages of being a Congressperson or are simply not up to the complexity of today's challenges, we do not have a Congress that appears to be principled or acting in the best interests of the American public.
Without seeing R.P. in action, it is hard to tell how he would be as a Congressperson.
The Senate as therapy for the misguided? One hundred precious seats and you would give one to a candidate that holds contempt for the Constitution and its Amendments, ... the document that provides for his office?
I have an open heart for ideas and positions, but I find the words of this man to be reprehensible. His own party has silenced him, and the Republican legislature in his State reaffirmed their belief in the precepts of the Cicil Rights Act of 1964, ... as a direct response to his statements and positions.
Sorry, he's a physician and can probably see any shrink in Kentucky he might like, and receive a substantial discount as professional courtesy.
The Senate Chamber is not outfitted with 100 couches for the demented among us, ... it is outfitted with 100 working chairs and tables, there to conduct the People's business.
Good article.
No one, and probably not the Pauls, is pining away for the days of 'whites only' water fountains. Yes, their anti-federalist position is popular with racist groups and they get some support on that basis, but I really don't think it's their motive.
The point to attack is that their ideology is so impractical, despite its bumper-sticker simplicity, that it leads one, even one who has spent his ENTIRE LIFE pondering the various ins and outs, to publicly take a stand against the most basic protections of the Civil Rights Act...forty five years later...with no one particularly complaining about draconian boot of the federal government forcing them to serve people of every race.
That's what ideology does to you. It gets you ensnared in absurdities like that. Does anyone really think that the Republican Party, for all the ground they have to regain and all the dire issues facing this country that they have to eventually get around to having workable solutions for, wants to spend the next six months debating Jim Crow-era segregation? Of course not.
Ideology admits no real-politick. Even Reagan understood that.
Progressives are children, and they think that government is everyone's daddy. They need a daddy to lead them around and force the other children to play in ways that are acceptable. They simply don't understand justice, or value individual liberty.
It is true that free people can choose not to patronize bigoted businesses. It's also true that the same free people can petition their government for a redress of grievances and have their voice heard. And they did. And the result was the Civil Rights acts of the 60s.
And yeah yeah yeah, we've all heard the "you think the government is momm/daddy" nonsense before. Save it. The people who think that way are conservatives, not progressives. You're projecting.
We think of government as a tool. Imperfect, often a blunt instrument, easily corrupted, but irreplaceable. Just like the market. Just like the military. Just like academia.
But just that, okay: a tool. Not a parent by proxy. Not a substitute for personal judgment. A tool.
Get over this: we the people decided FORTY SIX YEARS AGO that we are not going to allow businesses that serve the public to discriminate on the basis of race. WE decided it. Not "the government." We the People.
Grow up.
But also important is that, by the late 1960s, after it became increasingly unacceptable, socially, to express racist/segregationist beliefs, segregationists began using code words to support their ideas without - they hoped - being quite so obviously bigoted. That's why Reagan defended states' rights at Philadelphia, Miss.; that was a blatant but coded appeal to the segregationist vote.
Another code was for segregationists to denounce "big government" as too powerful and needing to be limited. Segregationists used libertarian arguments in an effort to thwart the government's ability to defend the rights of a minority. To a considerable degree, segregationists have won the national debate, as many people reflexively criticize the federal government as too powerful, without always understanding the implications of what they're saying or the historical basis for it.
I can't say if Paul is a true libertarian and therefore speaking from ideology, or if he's a covert racist expressing his racism in code language. I just know that he's siding with the segregationists, whether knowingly or not.
I happen to agree with you Danish friend. America doesn't pay substantially less taxes than other countries. When you add in our self-funding of higher education, retirement and health care, we actually pay more, its just distributed in a way that leaves large segments of our population priced out of the market for things like health care, retirement and higher education. America follows this path at its long-term peril, IMHO.
Small government means you'd be paying fees for everything.
There is an amendment process to lawfully change the contract between the government and the governed. The reinterpretation argument is just an example of stupendous hubris by authoritarians who refuse to see any limits on their ability to control the people around them.
Reading the discourse surrounding the adoption of the Constitution one becomes immediately aware of the extent to which the framers were aware of the documents limitations and even of the capacity for later generations to interpret a different meaning from it than what they meant. They were not men intending to write an eternal text.
The Amendment process was intended to be a mechanism to address change but over time the Amendment process has become considerably more difficult than the framers envisioned.
The idea that authoritarians are the only ones that interpret the Constitution is also a lie proven often by supporters of Second Amendment rights who wish to argue that there exists an individual right in the text of the Constitution when it is clear the right is corporate in purpose.
Really?
I think you are confusing fact with opinion.