What Rand Paul Means

You may have heard this past week about the big win for tea party favorite Rand Paul in the Kentucky Republican senatorial primary contest. You may also have heard about the controversy engendered by his comments that he has some philosophical problems with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. I'll try to provide a little clarity.

Paul's win this past Tuesday, a nearly two to one shellacking of Trey Grayson, Republican Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell's handpicked candidate, was part of a larger narrative that saw insurgent Joe Sestak beat Arlen Specter in the Democratic senatorial race in Pennsylvania. It seems adherents of both parties are going for hardliners rather than moderates.

Beyond that, Paul, the son of Texas congressman and former Libertarian presidential nominee Ron Paul, created some waves by saying he'd have trouble voting for the landmark Civil Rights Act today. He said he opposes any kind of racism and supports enforcing non-discrimination in public facilities, but is against government telling private business how to run its operations. You can see his interview on MSNBC with Rachel Maddow here. She asked, "Do you think a private business has the right to say, we don't serve black people?" He answered, "Yes. I am not in favor of any discrimination of any form...but I also don't want to limit their speech in any way." He also complained against President Obama's "Unamerican" criticism of BP corporation running its business in the way it sees fit.

This kind of thing sums up the arch conservative to Libertarian wing of conservatism nicely. They have near-absolutist views on property rights. It is my restaurant, they feel, and I can discriminate if I want to. It is my business, they say, and if I cause pollution or noise that harms other people in the vicinity, my property rights trump their health and safety. They have a similar "to hell with everyone else" view of civil rights. My right to treat other people in a dehumanizing way outranks their right to be treated as worthwhile human beings. They hold these views sincerely, and feel they are productive of freedom.

Such a perspective is, of course, terribly flawed. The right to dehumanize people is never justified. Where does it end? Does someone's right to be secure from rape end when they step onto the rapist's property? That is where Paul's reasoning leads. Segregation and discrimination are crimes. We have declared this as a nation in the 14th Amendment, the Brown v. Topeka ruling and the Civil Rights Act. As such, there cannot be selected areas where criminals who violate them are sheltered from the law. The tea party-Libertarian elevation of property rights over human rights marks them as extremist, inegalitarian and un-American in the most profound sense. The elevation of the "right" of the abuser to abuse over that of the intended victim to be treated fairly marks them as inhumane. The utopia envisioned by people like Rand and Ron Paul would devolve into a nightmare of protected racism and exclusionism of all types. As Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson surmises, when it comes to Libertarian theory, "purist philosophy leads people to believe in the purest nonsense."