Rand Paul And “Race”
P. Schultz
April 11, 2013
Some years
ago, I use to explain to students why I was neither a “liberal” or a
“conservative” as those terms are used today, by saying: “Well, let me say that
I decided to be a ‘conservative.’ Then here comes this guy down the street, a
‘conservative,’ and he is saying really stupid stuff. Guess I cannot be
‘conservative.’”
Well, here
a wonderful illustration of that phenomenon, Rand Paul addressing students at
Howard University in Washington, D.C. and saying what can only be described as
“stupid stuff.” In fact, Paul illustrates and underlines his own ignorance,
along with his rather pathetic attempts as duplicity. For example, to argue
that the Civil Rights Act is suspect because it, allegedly, leads to mandatory
calorie listings in restaurants or to mandatory health messages on cigarette
packages because this is regulating “private” behavior is, as the students at
Howard knew, just laughable. And it is just unnecessary insofar as it is a
long-standing legal principle that those who sell to or provide services to
“the public” have the obligation to do so in a way that does not discriminate
against parts of the public and that comports with the legally defined good of
the country. Those who engage in activities or groups that are, genuinely,
private, such as country clubs or even the Boy Scouts, would be allowed to
discriminate should they desire to do so.
And from my
perspective, a perspective which makes our imperialism one of the most
important factors undermining our attempt to remain a “republic,” this is
debilitating as it allows others to marginalize Rand Paul, thereby making his
more cogent arguments, those on our “activist, interventionist foreign policy”
look just as ignorant or unreasonable. But then, why should I be surprised? Paul’s
“ignorance” has “redeeming social value;” that is, it does if you think that
preserving the status quo is a “redeeming social value.”
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