Rand Paul Supports Legalized Discrimination

Not a long one here, but it's worth viewing the disembowelment of Rand Paul by Rachel Maddow.

The short version is that when confronted with the obvious import of his positions, which is that he thinks the government has no right to prohibit racial or other discrimination by businesses, he becomes painfully inarticulate, blathering on about "institutionalized racism" and acting as though this is merely an abstract or academic debate.

He claims that he is so pure he doesn't agree with racism, and he would never personally discriminate. Apparently it's just a coincidence that when that position was asserted in the United States in the 1960's, 100% of those who were asserting it were white racists asserting the right to discriminate against black people.

That position has been almost universally rejected because it is impossible to have a free society of equal opportunity for all--not equality of outcome, which conservatives are incessantly whining about--if racial and other types of discrimination are allowed, even by private entities.

Jim Crow, and other racially discriminatory practices, were a way for the South to continue the oppression of black people even after the abolition of slavery. In all parts of the country, racial discrimination prevented black people from having access to all kinds of public and private resources, including employment, housing, and the other avenues of commerce. In the South and in the North, these practices were established and fostered by the power structure to maintain the oppression of black people.

Anyone who pretends that it is merely an abstract question, and not one that has the real effect of perpetuating racial discrimination, is being intentionally dense.

In 2010 nobody is that stupid, not even Rand Paul.

One other thing: if this election is, as Rand Paul claims, a message from the Tea Party, then it's no wonder the teahadists are widely considered a pack of mouthbreathing racists.