@Rand Paul discussion,
Here is a pretty good article I read on it recently, in the interest of openess it comes from the perspective of a right leaning libertarian, but I think it offers a solid description of where Rand Paul is coming from:
Before diving into the substance of Dr. Rand Paul’s remarks on the 1964 Civil Rights Act, let’s get one thing straight: Paul was a fool for blundering into that tar pit — or allowing MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow to lure him into it like a drunken farmer chasing a corpse candle into a bog. Worse, once hip deep in the big muddy, he contracted a bad case of hoof-in-mouth disease and couldn’t defend his position. But just because one shallow thinker of today was unable to defend the liberty position doesn’t make indefensible a principle famously argued by Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential election campaign… no matter what Hugh Hewitt says. It’s hard to nail down exactly what Paul’s position actually is; I think it’s the same as Goldwater’s: Where state or federal policy either directly discriminates on the basis of race or else mandates private racial discrimination, it is absolutely appropriate to pass a federal law overturning such “institutional racialism;” however, such a law should not and constitutionally cannot reach beyond that point to purely private and voluntary racial discrimination, which (alas) the final version of the Act did. That’s why Goldwater voted against it after having supported earlier versions that did not outlaw private, volunatry discrimination; and fair warning, that is my objection to the Act, as well. Here’s my best collage of Paul’s lengthy, meandering, and unfocused response to Maddow:
It goes on an on, but the basic points are all here. Note that Paul brings up a valid analogy — should gun owners in a gun-friendly state be allowed to bring guns into a restaurant, even against the will of the restaurant’s owner? Paul says no. But if the owner is allowed the private-property liberty to control who brings a weapon into his facility, then under what principle can he not control who he allows in, period? The analogy was valid, but it was (again) foolishly chosen: No listener not already predisposed to the Goldwater, Paul, and Lizardian point of view will understand his point. Allow me to help Dr. Paul out of the mire; again, bear in mind I’m defending his position, not the hamfisted way he expressed it. Rachel Maddow’s fundamental confusion is shared by all liberals and about 80% of conservatives (e.g., Hugh Hewitt): Under Jim Crow, the problem wasn’t that individual owners “decided” to racially discriminate; state laws required them to discriminate. In a free market, some-but-not-all restaurants will discriminate, while others won’t. Those that do cut off much of their customer base — not just the potential customers who are black but also those whites who vehemently oppose racial discrimination; their non-discriminating competitors get the extra business instead. Thus, a discriminatory stance creates an automatic “economic penalty”: Racism becomes an expensive luxury that most business owners simply cannot afford. (The same punishment operates whenever an owner makes an economic decision on a completely non-economic basis, such as not serving old people or divesting stock from companies that do business with Israel; that’s one of the magical effects of a free market!) After a while, many racists will decide they need the money more than they need to discriminate; they will take down the “whites only” sign, no matter how much it pains them, or risk going out of business. A few will maintain their discrimination until the bitter end; so it goes. But wait, what about the other side of the coin? Some dyed in the wool racists would only frequent those establishments that discriminate. They will boycott the integrated businesses and patronize only the racists. Frankly, I doubt that such persons would have been the majority in any state even back in the days of Jim Crow: If they had been the majority, there would have been no need for laws to force them to do what they wanted to do in the first place. The very fact that the state legislature had to enact Jim Crow laws testifies that residents weren’t discriminating, they weren’t keeping blacks “in their places.” Walter Williams writes about this in his wonderful book, South Africa’s War Against Capitalism: The Afrikaaners enacted Apartheid laws precisely because at the turn of the twentieth century, businesses (from railroads to mines to hotels), left to their own free will, were rapidly integrating the races. Economic necessity was breaking down the barriers; blacks offered their services for lower wages than whites, and employers snapped them up to save labor costs. Soon the whites had to lower their own wages to compete; at the same time, as blacks gained more experience, they raised their demands… eventually, the two races met in the middle, more or less. Funnily enough, one of the first bills the Kreugerites enacted forced businesses to pay blacks and whites exactly the same wages, “equal pay for equal work.” Sound familiar? The effect was to remove the financial incentive to hire blacks, because their labor was no longer any bargain. With the market mechanisms removed, it was easy to threaten or bully businesses into hiring and promoting only whites. (Most of the racist coercion was committed by the socialist labor unions, by the way… quelle surprise!) Thus, even in Apartheid South Africa, the free market acted to integrate and equalize the races, while the government — “for their own good” — acted to segregate and discriminate between them — “Apartheid” literally means “apart-ness”. In any event, I steadfastly believe that even in the deep South in the 1950s, far more potential customers would choose to patronize a business on the basis of quality and price — than on the basis of whether that business segregated black from white. Over the long run (which would likely be only a few years), that would drive out the adamant racists: Businesses operate on such a small margin that even a small economic advantage towards race neutrality would have an oversized effect on a business’ viability. Unless, that is, the state steps in and makes such racial discrimination mandatory; that is what we mean by “Jim Crow.” If the state interferes with the market, forcing everyone to discriminate, it kills the market’s ability to drive behavior away from irrelevant (and offensive) absurdities like racial discrimination: I can no longer compete with a “whites only” lunchcounter by advertising “we serve everybody!” I would be arrested and my business shut down if I tried. That robs me of my liberty, my property rights; and that is the ground on which the Civil Rights Act should have been fought. Let freedom reign, and allow the market to do its holy job of driving the fools and haters out of business. Of course, there will always be pockets where there really are more racists than sons and daughters of liberty; in those dark nooks, they will open their whites-only swimming pools and bowling alleys and ice-skating rinks. What do we do about that? We let them. If they want to segregate themselves away from the rest of society, let them huddle together and fester. So long as we all have freedom of mobility and association, the 99% of the country that is decent will isolate the tiny fraction who are morally putrid; and the good citizens will open their own pools, alleys, and rinks open to everyone. After all, there’s gold in them thar businesses. The racist kooks will become curiosities, monkeys in a zoo: We’ll point and laugh at the funny and now-powerless haters, just as we do whenever the Ku Klux Klan musters its eight or nine hoodwinkers to stand on the corner holding up racist, and typically illiterate signs. That’s the American way, the path of liberty. Just as we don’t deny Klansmen, Black Panthers, or MEChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán) their freedom of speech, we should also not deny them their right to serve only “their own kind,” if that’s what they want. Nor do we prevent the rest of us from expressing displeasure by patronizing their competitors instead. Had Rand Paul really thought this all through aforehand, he could have answered Rachel Maddow much more powerfully and directly, like this (warning, fabricated interview ahead!):
I am quite certain this would have been much, much harder to spin as racist, pro-segregation, and anti-civil rights. And in any event, it sure would have made more exciting political theater! |
Despite the jabs at lefties at the end there, I think it is a pretty solid defense of libertarian thinking on this issue.
I'm actually curious to see what other libertarians / libertarian-leaning folks think of it.