Since I teach American Government as part of my day job, I have to thank the Lord for Rand Paul. This is the guy who in a few short days made a lot of abstract principles concrete. Whether that concrete can serve as the foundation for a serious Senate bid remains to be seen.
On Tuesday, Paul crushed the establishment Republican candidate for Senate, and did so with Tea Party backing. That serves as a perfect illustration of the public mood: anti-establishment to the core. (PowerPoint slide number one).
Two days later candidate Paul showed what the point of political establishments is: they help to select candidates who know what not to say on MSNBC. He also showed us what a real Libertarian thinks (PowerPoint slides two and three).
MADDOW: Do you think that a private business has the right to say 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 I think what's important about this debate is not written 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 freedom requires is that we allow people to be boorish and uncivilized, but that doesn't mean we approve of it. I think the problem with this debate is by getting muddled down into it, the implication is somehow that I would approve of any racism or discrimination, and I don't in any form or fashion.
Libertarians are probably among the least racist people on the planet. They put the highest possible value on individual freedom short of anarchy, and that means all individuals. The great thing about that is that, short of force or fraud, everyone gets to do pretty much whatever he or she wants. The not so great thing is that some people want rather bad things. (PowerPoint slides four and five).
Paul declared that he fully supported the 1964 Civil Rights Act in so far as it eliminated all segregation in government, but admitted that he was uncomfortable with the parts of the act that interfered with the freedoms of private businesses. (PowerPoint slides six and seven).
That is a great illustration of the strengths and weaknesses of Libertarianism. Yes, liberty does sometimes mean liberty for despicable people to do and say despicable things. But sometimes one liberty curtails another, and government must decide which to protect. Our freedom to drive at relatively high speeds is possible only because government denies us the freedom to decide which side of the damn road we want to drive on.
In the Civil Rights Act, Congress decided that the liberty to travel across America on our interstate highways was more important that the liberty of motel owners to refuse to accept African American guests. (PowerPoint slides eight and nine). I think that that was the right call.
Of course, the real problem with Rand Paul's reflections was not that Libertarian is a flawed doctrine. The problem is that Paul ignited a fire in his own house just at the moment of his great victory, a fire which he now has to put out. I gather that Paul does not call himself a Libertarian, preferring to describe himself as a Constitutional Conservative. He is not clueless about the need to control his image. That takes some skill, however, and he was clearly not ready to face Rachel Maddow.
I am not as sure as John Hinderaker at Powerline that Rand Paul will "never be ready" for prime time. But he does have to understand that politics is about building coalitions, not about publically fine tuning political principles. As a Republican, I hope Rand Paul gets his act together. As a political scientist and professor, he is the gift that keeps on giving.
I imagine we'll soon find out if he's learned his lesson, or not. It's probably a good thing that if he was going to make a statement like this (and I understand wh he did), then better to do it now than 10 days before the election.
I have pretty strong libertarian leanings myself and often joke that I can't vote for anyone that agrees with me TOO much, since they'd be unelectable - lol
Posted by: William | Saturday, May 22, 2010 at 06:05 PM