Apparently, if your last name is ‘Paul’ and you are running for higher office, the first thing you do is voice your opposition to ending the Jim Crow laws. That’s what Rand Paul did immediately after winning the Kentucky nomination for Senate, and that’s what Ron Paul has done on the day he announced his candidacy for president. Appearing on Hardball, Ron Paul argued that he isn’t a racist; he’s a supporter of property rights.
“Yeah, but I wouldn’t vote against getting rid of the Jim Crow laws,” Paul said. He explained that he would have opposed the Civil Rights Act “because of the property rights element, not because they got rid of the Jim Crow laws.”
His reasoning is totally awesome. Remember, he’s the one who said he would have voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. And his reason is this:
“This gimmick, it’s off the wall when you say I’m for property rights and for states rights, and therefore I’m a racist,” said the Texas congressman. “That’s just outlandish.”
Paul appealed to the free market, and argued that if a business owner were to post signs declaring segregation in his or her business, people wouldn’t patronize it.
“For you to imply that a property rights person is endorsing that stuff, you don’t understand that there would be zero signs up today saying something like that,” he said. “And if they did they would be an idiot and out of business.”
No one asked Ron Paul if he would sign the Civil Rights Act of 2011. Back in 1964, there were ‘Whites Only’ signs all across the South and no one was going out of business over it.
Ron Paul thinks it’s outlandish to call him a racist. Fine. I won’t call him a racist. I’ll just point out that he thinks it’s every American’s right to not serve black people.
White folks refusing to call other white folks racist is what allows racism to keep chugging away.
Maybe your snark-o-meter needs a trip to the shop.
Just once I would like to see these folks refused service because of the freedom of the business owner. I predict that the Pauls would start hollering about the law prohibiting that and they would not even blink at their hypocrisy.
What is becoming clear is two things. (1) These are not statements of principles and never were; they are political positioning with the racists while being coy so a not to lose those libertarians who think that liberty might apply to everybody. (2) The play on liberal criticism in order to gain power with independents, who tend to be very literal minded about political speech.
It’s an old post-Civil Rights era political shell game that Southern politicians have played well. It the “See, I don’t have horns and a tail” defense.
One can only hope that when the votes are cast in 2012 and the 20% crowd show up for whichever Rep crazed and *acist candidate is on the ballot that there will be a cadre of men in white suits awaiting them at each exit to cart them off to facilities where their breeding parts will be removed.
Apparently, if your last name is ‘Paul’ and you are running for higher office, the first thing you do is voice your opposition to ending the Jim Crow laws.
Except he said exactly the opposite of that. Ron Paul drew a distinction between Jim Crow laws, which he opposes and blames on big government, and traditions/individual decisions that foster discrimination.
I’m not writing this to defend the guy – just the opposite, I’m trying to sink his defense. He wants to point to his opposition to legally enforced discrimination as evidence that his ideology isn’t pro-discrimination. Let’s keep the focus on what he believes that is truly damning: his endorsement of the “right” for private parties to discriminate.
Arguing about the universally-accepted point that the government shouldn’t enforce discrimination is a waste of time, because even the bad guys agree with that, and can use their agreement to defend themselves. Arguing about what’s in Ron Paul’s heart is a waste of time, too.
The important message here is that his anti-government ideology itself, even without any covert racism, helps to defend and perpetuate evil.
I understand your point.
But you can’t get away with saying that you would have voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and then say that you wouldn’t have voted for Jim Crow laws.
There was one vote, one Federal vote, on whether or not you supported Jim Crow laws. Ron Paul would have voted to sustain those laws by voting against the law that struck them down.
He’s trying to get cute. But that’s bullshit.
There is a simple way to determine if Ron Paul is being racist, or if he’s merely applying Libertarian principles consistently. Ask him his position on immigration. A consistent Libertarian will tell you that there should be no barriers whatsoever to entry or exit to the country (except of course for felons). From a Libertarian perspective, just as the government has no business telling a private business who they can or can’t hire, it has no business telling a private individual where they can or can’t go. And if someone from another country comes here, from a Libertarian perspective the government has no business telling a private business they can’t hire them. Of course if Ron Paul were to take the Libertarian position, he’d catch hell from the right wing.
My sense of RoPaul, as with most contemporary GOPers, is that they are very adaptable about putting on a different ideological hat to fit the occasion, much in the tradition of the wily Texan LBJ who used to describe himself as either strictly a Southerner or a Westerner depending on the audience he was speaking to or the issue he was talking about, whichever description would offer him the political advantage.
Paul is both a self-describing libertarian and conservative, and because today’s Tea Party-GOP demands stricter borders and a severe crackdown on illegal immigration, Paul’s position becomes appropriately conservative to fit the moment. And so he argues from a hardline conservative pov that The Rule of Law Must Be Upheld and illegals can’t be rewarded for breaking the law.
Leonard Zeskind has accurately identified Ron Paul as the white nationalist candidate. All his posturing is designed to distract attention from that.