The great American book that refutes Rand Paul
As a native of Texas, where white-only businesses were legal until the Civil Rights Act passed, where interracial marriage was illegal until the Supreme Court issued its holding in Loving v. Virginia in 1967, and where private racial discrimination in housing was legal until President Johnson pushed through one of his personal obsessions, the Fair Housing Act of 1968, I can suggest a book that Rand Paul and like-minded libertarians really ought to read: John Howard Griffin's "Black Like Me."The courts have ruled that public accommodations may not discriminate against class of people - such as women, Catholics, tall people etc. because it violates the 14th Amendment and since almost all businesses engage in interstate commerce, those businesses can be regulated under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. One of many court cases that have lead to enactment of Civil Rights legislation is the Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States decision.
...Having been forced out of his home and his town and into hiding by white supremacists, Griffin had no patience for the kind of sophistry employed by people like Barry Goldwater and Rand Paul, who argue that, while they are personally opposed to private sector racism, they believe that a commitment to individual liberty requires us to tolerate racial discrimination by private businesses, but not by public agencies.
On rereading "Black Like Me" with Rand Paul's controversial comments in mind, I was struck by how very few truly public places there were in the apartheid South. Employers, subdivisions, stores, restaurants, gas stations, hotels -- Rand Paul would have allowed all of these to be segregated to this day because they are privately owned. According to this disingenuous theory, in the segregated South everyone, black or white, should have had a right to work, eat and sleep at the small-town post office or police station, because they were public agencies -- but no right to work, eat or sleep anywhere else.
Private employment? Disguised as a "Negro," Griffin tried to get a job at a plant in Mobile, Ala., by offering to accept less pay than a white man would:
"No use trying down here," he said. "We're gradually getting you people weeded out from the better jobs at this plant. We're taking it slow, but we're doing it. Pretty soon we'll have it so the only jobs you can get here are the ones no white man would have."
"How can we live?" I asked hopelessly, careful not to give the impression I was arguing.
"That's the whole point," he said, looking me square in the eyes, but with some faint sympathy, as though he regretted the need to say what followed: "We're going to do our damndest to drive every one of you out of the state."
Private real estate transactions? Until struck down by federal law, restrictive covenants barring homeowners from selling to blacks, Latinos and sometimes Catholics and Jews were common in every region of the country. Griffin tells the story of a talk he gave at a college where an industrial psychologist was the only black in attendance. A white college professor, proud of his paternalistic liberalism, asked the black doctor of industrial psychology whether he considered the lecture a turning point in the community's history, and was shocked to be told no:
The doctor said, "It's true that I have a good job in this town, and I seem to be respected, and I am certainly paid a wage commensurate with my skills. But -- so long as I have to house my wife and children in a town twenty miles away because I can't buy, rent, lease or build a home here, don't expect me to get too excited over your 'historic turning points.'"
Privately-owned stores?
No matter where you are, the nearest Negro café is always far away, it seems. I learned to eat a great deal when it was available and convenient, because it might not be available or convenient when the belly next indicated its hunger ... It is not that they crave service in the white man’s café over their own -- it is simply that in many sparsely settled areas Negro cafes do not exist; and even in densely settled areas, one must sometimes cross town for a glass of water. It is rankling, too, to be encouraged to buy all of one's goods in white stores and then be refused soda fountain or rest-room service.
Rand Paul is a year younger than I am, born like me in Texas during the final years of segregation. I have difficulty believing that any white Southerner my age who questions the civil rights laws that broke down the all-encompassing system of "private" economic and social segregation in our native region does so purely out of libertarian principle. I would have trouble believing that, even if not for recent revelations that his father’s supposedly libertarian newsletter for decades was filled with unsigned racist rants.
I have known and worked with many conservatives and libertarians in my life, and in my experience states' rights arguments and libertarian arguments against the Civil Rights, Voting Rights and Fair Housing Acts are used opportunistically by people who are covert, if not overt, bigots.
Why does the media give Sarah Palin a soapbox to echo her inane rantings - Palin suggests Obama oil ties impede spill cleanup
Sarah Palin, the former Republican vice presidential candidate who helped popularize "Drill, baby, drill" as a slogan, suggested Sunday that President Obama's campaign ties to the oil industry were impeding cleanup of the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs responded that Palin should better inform herself about oil politics and policy.
Speaking on " Fox News Sunday," the former Alaska governor said she remained a "big supporter" of oil drilling but believed "these oil companies have got to be held accountable."
...Pointing to what she termed the White House's relationship with "the oil companies who have so supported President Obama in his campaign and are supportive of him now," Palin questioned whether "there's any connection there to President Obama taking so doggone long to get in there, to dive in there, and grasp the complexity and the potential tragedy that we are seeing here in the Gulf of Mexico."
Gibbs, on CBS News' "Face the Nation," suggested Palin do some homework.
"I'm almost sure that the oil companies don't consider the Obama administration a huge ally," Gibbs said. "We proposed a windfall profits tax when they jacked their oil prices up to charge more for gasoline."
Gibbs said, "My suggestion to Sarah Palin would be to get slightly more informed as to what's going on in and around oil drilling in this country."
The oil and gas industry donated $2.4 million to Palin's running mate, Republican John McCain, in the 2008 election cycle, and nearly $900,000 to Obama, according to the Center for Responsive Politics' opensecrets.org website.
