Even Libertarians Think Paul Is Wrong

By now you've probably heard about the furor caused by the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate in Kentucky -- Rand Paul. After winning that nomination, Paul let it be known that he believes the 1964 Civil Rights Act was wrong when it mandated that businesses could not discriminate on the basis of race. He said businesses should be able to discriminate against anyone they wanted to, and if they wanted to discriminate on the basis of race then they should be able to do that.

After seeing that he had kicked a hornet's nest with that pronouncement, Paul has tried to back-pedal. He claims he is not a racist (even though he holds racist views) and says he would not try to overturn the law preventing discrimination. A few others, including disreputable former newsman John Stossel, have tried to defend Paul. They say this is just a basic belief in the importance of property rights and is shared by all Libertarians.

Unfortunately for Paul, that is just not true. AOL News decided to see if all Libertarians believed businesses should have the right to discriminate, so they asked that question of several Libertarian scholars, and the three who responded to their inquiry all disagreed with Rand Paul. They did not disagree with the law, and in fact, felt it was necessary to break the iron grip of Jim Crow in America (especially in the South). Here is what they said:

Brink Lindsey (Cato Institute)

"Rand Paul is appealing to the general principle of freedom of association, and that general principle is a good one. But it has exceptions. In particular, after three-plus centuries of slavery and another century of institutionalized, state-sponsored racism (which included state toleration of private racist violence), the exclusion of blacks from public accommodations wasn't just a series of uncoordinated private decisions by individuals exercising their freedom of association. It was part and parcel of an overall social system of racial oppression."

Richard Epstein (University of Chicago)

"To be against Title II in 1964 would be to be brain-dead to the underlying realities of how this world works. In 1964, every major public accommodation that operated a nationwide business was in favor of being forced to admit minorities."

David Bernstein (George Mason Law School)

"If segregation and discrimination in the Jim Crow South was simply a matter of law, federal legislation that would have overturned Jim Crow laws would have sufficed. But, in fact, it involved the equivalent of a white supremacist cartel, enforced not just by overt government regulation like segregation laws, but also by the implicit threat of private violence and harassment of anyone who challenged the racist status quo. Therefore, to break the Jim Crow cartel, there were only two options: (1) a federal law invalidating Jim Crow laws, along with a massive federal takeover of local government by the federal government to prevent violence and extralegal harassment of those who chose to integrate; or (2) a federal law banning discrimination by private parties, so that violence and harassment would generally be pointless. If, like me, you believe that it was morally essential to break the Jim Crow cartel, option 2 was the lesser of two evils. I therefore would have voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Act."

The fact is that Paul does not hold this racist view because he is Libertarian, but because he is a teabagger, and it is the teabaggers he has been trying to appeal to -- a group much more prone to accepting racist views than Libertarians. He evidently thinks this racist viewpoint will appeal to the voters in Kentucky. I sincerely hope he is wrong.

It is one thing to win a Republican primary with racist views -- a party that has been taken over by teabaggers in several states. But it may be a lot different to try and win a general election with that viewpoint. He's going to need a lot of independents to win the general election, and they could easily be offended by his racist views.

Although this country still has racial problems, a lot of progress has been made (and much of it was due to the 1964 Civil Rights Act). I don't think most people are going to want to re-open this can of worms and replay the bad old days of segregation.