Some quick thoughts on Rand Paul’s interview with Rachel Maddow. (props to Maddow for her superior Kung Fu in that exchange.)
Other useful links:
Transcript after the jump.
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Rand Paul on the Rachel Maddow show. Man. That was spectacular. If you didn’t see it, basically Rachel was asking Rand Paul whether he would have supported the 1964 Civil Rights Act. And she asked him that same yes-or-no question about 10 times in a row, and Rand Paul did some of the most acrobatic question-dodging I have ever witnessed in my life.
In case you didn’t see it, let me show you a clip of what that interview would look like if it was a scene from the classic Shaw Brothers’ film, Fist of the White Lotus:
[audio montage of Maddow/Paul exchange, mixed over Fist of the White Lotus fight scene]
Maddow: [over Gordon Liu-Chia Hui] Do you think Woolworth’s lunch counter should have been allowed to stay segregated? Sir, just ‘yes’ or ‘no.’
Paul: [over visual of Lo Lieh dodging Gordon Liu's punches] Well, one interesting historical tidbit…One of the interesting things about…Interesting thing is…I think it’s interesting…interesting…interesting…William Lloyd Garrison…Frederick Douglass….Gun organizations…The interesting…interesting…interesting…that I would’ve marched with Martin Luther King because I believed in what he was doing.
That is a question dodging master! I think he has a black-belt in here’s-the-interesting-thingjitsu. Some people are taking this interview as proof that he’s a racist – that he supports discrimination. Now, I don’t know if Rand Paul is racist. I don’t think this interview proves that he supports racism. But it does prove that his ideal government just happens to be one that would open lots of doors for racism. And make discrimination of all kinds easier than it is now.
Does that prove he’s some hard-core racist that doesn’t care about Black people? No. But it does suggest that he’s such a hard-core purist libertarian that he cares more about this abstract set of principles than he cares about any actual people – that he’s more committed to these rigid abstractions than he is to protecting the basic rights of human beings in the real world.
And if that’s the case, that means this Civil Rights Act thing is just the tip of the iceberg. That means there are a whole lot of cases where if Rand Paul has to describe his beliefs in detail, his beliefs are going to sound really weird, and alienating. And I think Rand Paul knows that, and that’s why he’s trying so hard not to describe his own beliefs in plain English.
And that is the part that really bothers me. It’s not even the ideological stuff, so much as the craven, weaselly, insulting-our-intelligence, non-answer-giving, cynical, political hackiness of that performance. It’s that this candidate, who’s supposed to be the alternative to politics as usual, when push comes to shove, would rather give the same old weaselly political non-answers than show the courage of his convictions, and speak from the heart about his weird, alienating beliefs.Rand Paul, stop weaseling.
[under the outro music] I’m gonna make stop weaseling t-shirts. I’ll be selling them on Edgecombe Avenue, come see me.
-transcribed by Julia Tillinghast-Akalin
{ 28 comments… read them below or add one }
as always, good cool common sense with a generous shot of outrage and enough skepticism to balance it all. couple of things you probably heard, but anyway: the rachel interview was paul’s third of the day on the topic, which set the whole thing up (not to take any props from rachel). and someone said yesterday—maybe it was harold ford—that paul was trying to be “philosophically pure,” which makes sense. he was world-class weaselly about not answering straight up, but i actually think the guy is too honest about his wacky libertarian views to survive in national politics. if he stumbles this deep in shit the day after winning the primary, he is not going to five months of national scrutiny before the election.
sorry, missing words: he is not going to *stand up to* five months of national scrutiny…
You note that Paul’s interview with Maddow suggests that “he’s more committed to this rigid abstractions than he is to protecting the basic rights of human beings in the real world.” I think that, being a libertarian, Paul believes that property rights are among those most basic rights (and indeed that property rights may be the most basic). So I don’t think it’s a matter of being more concerned with abstractions than rights, but that he believes that individuals have the right to be racist. (And to muddy the conversation a bit further, aren’t “rights” also abstractions?)
I was frustrated, like you, that Paul wouldn’t make his case plainly, but he did raise some issues worth thinking about. If owners of public accommodations cannot restrict individual rights, should bar owners be prohibited from banning hand guns from the premises? You point out that the logical result of Paul’s ideology is that is makes it easier for people to discriminate; as he mentioned, so does the first amendment. Why not make it illegal for people to express racist ideas?
There certainly is a plain answer to Maddow’s “yes or no” question, but I think part of the reason why Paul avoided delivering it is that it shouldn’t close a conversation but should open one, a very complex one, and one that’s unlikely to take place in the short space of time available on Maddow’s show. (Chomsky years ago made this point about trying to explain progressive views on television; ideas that are contrary to the prevailing norm need time to explicate, so given the extreme concision practiced on most television news shows, the context necessary to understand radical positions will rarely be part of the conversation.)
Very well stated. Rand is being tripped up by his lack of clarity and low intelligence. Lets not miss however, that he is trying to articulate the justification for the defense of the big banks, insurance companies, and most lately, BP. Don’t take this personally, Negroes, Latinos, and poor white trash. Its about economics, pure and simple. 97 % of the wealth is held by 3% of the people. The real elite, Bushes people, remember? Maintenance of the status quo. Obama is acutey aware of this, that is why he is truely despised by the right. There is an ideological civil war brewing that transcends race. Same as the first one. It’s all about money, ain’t a damn thing funny. People will always be expendable.
“If owners of public accommodations cannot restrict individual rights, should bar owners be prohibited from banning hand guns from the premises?”
No. Owners of public accommodations have all kinds of abilities to restrict what people DO in their accommodation. They have much less legal ability to restrict WHO gets to come in the door. Bringing a gun is an action, not an identity.
“You point out that the logical result of Paul’s ideology is that is makes it easier for people to discriminate; as he mentioned, so does the first amendment. Why not make it illegal for people to express racist ideas?”
The First Amendment doesn’t allow discrimination, it allows people to say nasty discriminatory things. The owner of a bar has a First Amendment right to shout racial slurs at all Latinos who enter his bar, but he doesn’t have the right or power to prevent them from coming in just because of their race. So Paul’s ideology is still very distinct from the First Amendment.
Actually I think there are a lot of good reasons to make it illegal for people to use racial epithets. But that’s a separate argument.
Every politician, no – every person has an issue that they feel uncomfortable taking to it’s extreme conclusion.
I believe in free speech. However, you could corner me using a real life debate about what type of vile, disgusting mess a blogger should be allowed to publish legally.
I don’t agree with Paul’s views, but it looks like he was sensitive to delivering a money quote that can be taken out of context.
“I don’t agree with Paul’s views, but it looks like he was sensitive to delivering a money quote that can be taken out of context.”
Then he should have said that instead of being sir dodge-a-lot. It’s the pretending like he didn’t hear the question/willing disregard of the need to answer that is problematic. His interviewer was not hostile (a la O’reilly). He came on the show to take part in an interview and answer questions. So don’t act like you don’t hear the questions, and dance around them. Respond to them, and if you are not going to give an answer because of the question, say “I do not like that question because the answer will become an out-of-context sound bite”.
Quit playing games, I think, is the point.
Lena, you are begging the question. The reason owners have less legal ability to decide who to allow in is because the Civil Rights act extended the obligation of the government to recognize the rights of individuals to those owners. One right the government is required to recognize, per the 2nd Amendment, is the right to bear arms. If the owners should be legally required to recognize the right to public assembly, why should they be free to deny other rights enumerated in the Constitution?
I’d be interested in hearing your arguments in favor of making the use of racial epithets illegal. How would you respond if someone suggested you are more committed to an abstract concept–equality–than you are to protecting the basic rights of human beings in the real world?
Jeff, he did say that in the Maddow interview:
“But I think what’s important in this debate is not getting 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”
Should gay oriented businesses be forced to serve members of the Westboro Baptist church?
Should the black owner of a bed and breakfast be forced to rent out rooms to members of the KKK?
Should Muslim bookstores be forced to order Christian books for customers? What about books that are critical of Islam?
Should private Catholic schools be forced to hire non-Catholics as teachers?
I agree with Rand, if the business isn’t receiving any tax money or government subsidies then the business owner him/herself has the right to run their business any way they choose. And if the local Christian bookstore refuses to order the latest Richard Dawkins book for me then I can buy elsewhere and the business loses out on the profit they could have made.
i actually think the guy is too honest about his wacky libertarian views
He’s not honest. He’s stupid. Furthermore, he’s only a libertarian when it suits him. He thought a 2-story business could be compelled to put in an elevator to accommodate an employee in a wheelchair: wrong. So far as I know, the law he’s thinking of doesn’t apply to buildings under 3 stories tall.
Furthermore, as a doctor, he’s fighting to prevent cuts in government payments to doctors. Surely as a libertarian he’d want to sell his labor on the open market? Except he’s not doing that. Furthermore, he’s not advocating for the opening of the medical profession by doing away with government medical licensing.
Point being, Rand Paul is either an idiot or a libertarian only when it hurts anyone but himself.
Defend libertarianism, if you like; defend the notion of disapproving of something but not preventing laws against it (do you feel the same way about murder or rape?); but to defend Rand Paul is a fool’s game.
Aamilw – well, because the bill of rights limits what the federal (and eventually state) governments can do regarding individual rights, and then as you said the Civil Rights Act extended that to owners in the case of racial discrimination.
We could pass a federal law that extends those limits on private owners to second amendment rights in the same way – it would be the Gun Rights Act of 2012 or whatever you want to call it, and it could mirror the Civil Rights Act by forbidding owners of public accommodation to ‘discriminate’ against gun carriers.
It could become the law – it just isn’t, currently. So I wasn’t really making normative judgments so much as drawing the distinction that answered your rhetorical question. (If you then asked me what I thought of this hypothetical Gun Rights Act of 2012, then as a matter of policy I would say it’s simply a terrible idea, because I don’t like guns, and I don’t want to be around them. But it’s not the people carrying the guns that I refuse to share public space with, it’s the weapons themselves, which are thankfully detachable. Like I said before, carrying a gun is an activity, not an identity.)
On criminalizing racial (and sexual) epithets – the reason I might support doing that is exactly because I am more devoted to individual rights than to abstract principles. I’m worried about the individual rights of people who are attacked and victimized by that language. People who scream about the primacy of free speech are the ones devoted to an abstraction without concern for those [mostly women and people of color] who are the targets and victims of hate speech.
Point taken, Lena. I called attention to Jay’s abstraction vs. basic rights dichotomy because what the same behavior characterized as “committed to rigid abstraction” could be called “genuinely dedicated to principles,” and one sounds like a bad thing and the other sounds, well, principled. And you point out, in the case of hate speech, both sides can claim to be upholding principles and concerned for individuals. Exactly why I think the question of how to balance concern for the common good and respect for individual rights is difficult to deliver in 10 minutes on a TV talk show.
Can anyone come up with a reasonable refutation of MB’s points?
Should the owner of a Judaica shop be allowed to refuse service to neo-nazis?
@Lena: Racial epithets are hurtful and create an environment nobody should have to endure, but the slippery slope of such a big dent in the 1st Amendment seems very dangerous.
Would young people be prosecuted for calling each other “nigga?” How about a non-white who uses the word “ofay” in a moment of exasperation – and would it make a difference if it was said in response to being discriminated against? Some Jews use the term “shiksa” to refer to non-Jewish women; opinions on how insulting the word is vary. How would you decide if “shiksa” was worthy of prosecution? If a Roma person calls me “gaijin” in a sneering tone, do I call the police?
Would such things set a precedent for the banning of any derogatory speech? Would feminists who make negative generalizations about males be charged with an offense? Is “white trash” a racist term?
I think such a stricture would create a great deal of harm and actually generate racial animosity.
@karl: i’m not sure if you’re referring to me (“defend libertarianism if you like…defending rand paul is a fool’s game”), but hope you weren’t, because i wasn’t. hence “weaselly,” “wacky libertarian views,” and “stumbled deep in shit.” i was trying to convey a general lack of sympathy with his views and my belief that he has a dubious future as a politician at the national level.
that doesn’t mean he doesn’t mean what he says, no matter how hypocritical and self-serving he actually is. purity in this instance is not necessarily a virtue; purity and politics are not much related, as far as i can tell. and pure philosophy/ideology is a very scary thing.
@Peter @ MB
In a word, no, you should not be able to refuse service to anyone based on skin color, sexual orientation, religion, cultural differences, politics, etc… A hasidic jew should let a skinhead into his store and christian book store owner should have to order books for devout muslims. As long as the customer is relatively well behaved, well meaning and in the store to browse or buy, then they have an inalienable right to be there. If the customer tries to have a KKK or Black Panther (not equating there) rally in the store, then the store owner has every right to ask the customer to leave.
I think your examples are theoretical and not based on real, concrete life.
So let’s take some real life examples:
- Should an Arizona McDonald’s franchisee have the right to not let a brown colored person into his store, if he thinks the person is not in the country legally?
- Does a Milwaukee country club have the right to not except Jews?
- A lower income mostly white neighborhood is quickly becoming a gay-identified area. Does an old family business have the right to not allow gays into their store as a means to thwart the changes the business owners do not like that are happening to their area?
When asked about the Woolworths lunch counter example, his abstract retort was that well, what if someone wants to bring a gun into the store. You’ll have to allow that.
It’s not even the same thing. One is about people being allowed into the store at all, the other is about what someone does in the store. A gun and a human being are not equal. It’s the exact same line of thinking you get when people say if you allow gay marriage the next thing people will want to marry animals.
dumb.
Thanks for this Smooth…and the links, also.
Dr. (Ayn) Rand…Paul.
Full disclosure: In my distant past (mid-70′s) i read all of Ayn Rand’s work; and enjoyed the novels (and her -jury- theatrical play). Read them for what they were/are worth…really great romance novels.
The background philosophy and her unregulated capitalist treatise are jacked…but, you can’t have it all with wingnuts.
@Peter – yes that’s always the argument against any perceived limitation on the 1st Amendment – notwithstanding that there are already similar limits and freedoms carved out around pornography and commercial speech. This is exactly what the legal system does all the time: navigate ‘slippery slopes’ so we don’t slip. Obviously a proposal that racial epithets or hate speech should be criminalized does not mean that every instance of any possible racially negative language would be punished. Just like we don’t punish people for wrestling, which if they hadn’t consented, would be assault or battery or something else.
Legal responses to racist speech is discussed quite a lot in academic circles, if not in the public’s doctrinaire understanding of the 1st Amendment. These two articles make really compelling arguments:
Richard Delgado: “Words that Wound: A Tort Action for Racial Epithets, Insults, and Name-Calling.” Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, Spring, 1982
Mari Matsuda: “Public Response to Racist Speech: Considering the Victim’s Story.” Michigan Law Review August 1989.
@lena
thank you so much for your obviously very-well-informed comments (i take it you’re either an excellent law student or law professor). i think it’s quite valuable in the terms of this conversation (both here, and rand paul’s here’s-the-interesting-thing-jitsu) to understand that the civil rights act was an extension of limits placed on federal and state governments to private businesses owners. that is something i didn’t know, and i think other people don’t either. and, it also happens to totally undermine paul’s equating of guns and black people. also, excellent point about separating actions (gun-carrying) and people (gun-carriers).
however, i think to just say, “oh, we deal with slippery slopes all the time in law,” is just kinda disturbingly dismissive of real, legitimate concerns. for instance, look at what’s happened to our government’s (explicit) position on human rights (and i ask you right now to totally forgive my underly-detailed and overly-convenient account of history before i even start, but i think it’s close enough to reality for me to just try and make a point real quick): so, back in the day we’re all about human rights and everyone knows it so enemy soldiers during WWII are way more willing to surrender to us, then clinton starts leading us down the slope with extraordinary rendition (ok, i skipped a little bit), then 9/11 happens, and before you know it, it’s out with geneva and habeas corpus and any sort of attempt to actually ascertain someone’s guilt or innocence before we lock them up and throw away the key, and in with torture and indefinite detentions.
and it keeps going: they start with “enemy combatants” (whatever that means), slip down to anyone accused of being a terrorist who’s not an american citizen, and now we’ve gotten to the point where john mccain is mocking the idea of reading an american citizen his miranda rights (another legacy from arizona, btw, which i’m sure you already know), just because he’s accused of terrorism. how long until they expand the definition of terrorism and they can just go around nabbing accused gang members off the street and start torturing them? before bush, i would’ve thought that was just a paranoid fantasy, now i know it’s all too possible.
same deal with the use of mercenaries: we start in other countries, we bring them in for only special circumstances, and, if we’re not careful, we end up with a permanent paramilitary organization mucking everything up like they do in south america.
point is, the “slippery slope” is not just a rhetorical technique, it’s not just an abstract point. there are real, practical concerns about outcomes that are really, truly possible. i think it’s just a lack of imagination and complacency that’s so endemic to our country to think that our system is so great that we’ll never have to face those problems. we have slipped, we are slipping, we will slip in the future. we might be able to pull ourselves back up, but what we need to do is look at what’s at the end of that slope, decide how bad that outcome is and how likely we really are to get there, and then decide if it’s worth taking that first step, not just dismiss those concerns outright.
@jay
here’s-the-interesting-thing-jitsu? dude. you rock.
@Alice, that’s a really interesting analogy. I think there’s a big difference between slippery slopes of practice and politics and slippery slopes of defining legal rules. The slippery slope issue I was expressing doubt about is a concern for too much law, not the slippery slope of scaling laws back.
Of course, that all might be a result of description more than substance. Legal analysis often is.
Terrorism is a good example of a [vaguely] legal idea that has grown and broadened at a fairly frightening rate.
Of course, terrorism threatens white people and power structures, whereas hate speech rarely does that; in fact it’s usually the opposite. That makes a big difference.
@Peter @MB @ED
One thing I think is important to consider in this discussion is the idea of “business owner” vs “business entity.” If “Steve” owns a home, Steve can choose to never let Canadians into his home. That is his right as a property owner.
However, if Steve forms a business called Steve’s All America Hockey Store, LLC, Steve may be the business owner but he is not the business entity. Steve can hate Canadians all he wants. But his business (LLC) can’t keep Canadians out of his store. In exchange for opening his LLC’s store to everyone, Steve enjoys some government protections (like bankruptcy and liability shielding).
This gets into the minutia of business law (of which I have almost no knowledge (for instance, could Steve choose not to form an entity and still run a store that excludes all Canadians since he doesn’t enjoy any special protections?)), but this is generally how I reconcile my strong support of an individuals rights with the power of the government to regulate businesses.
The other counter point I think we noted in one of Jay’s references. Basically, we as a nation tried to allow market forces to de-segregate the nation after the Civil War. After 100 years, the experiment hadn’t worked because certain externalities precluded efficient market movement (e.g. high barriers to entry for minority business owners). I believe the government should intervene whenever markets are not or cannot operate efficiently (i.e. problems of public goods like air, water, or national defense). So, basically, we tried to let the market work it out and it couldn’t. So the feds stepped in to smooth things out.
Great video as always. One thing I wanted to note though — its important that we not let Rand Paul and his ilk conflate themselves with noble, ideological purists. Paul compromises those principles all the time: He’s come out against the closing Guantanamo Bay. He supported the government’s intervention into the Terri Schiavo case. He’s even opposed to cuts in Medicare — possibly because Paul himself is a practicing doctor, and he knows his business wouldn’t survive without continuing government intervention. So really, Paul isn’t “more committed to these rigid abstractions than he is to protecting the basic rights of human beings.” He’s only committed to his ideology when its politically expedient or personally beneficial.
I have no bias towards Maddow or Rand Paul…but Rand Pauls quotes have very obviously been taken out of context in parts and are cut and parts are missing.
The would you have voted yes or no to the civil rights act in 64 is an old question thats been asked to libertarians for decades because they know they can spew the answer to make that particular libertarian sound racist. They also know the general brain dead public just hears racist and the game is on……..this world is void of people who can think for themselves or see pass social conditioning.
Again I’m not saying I agree or disagree with Paul, just that, the idea that his answer thus makes him a racist is well…f’n childish at best.
I would like to add that as someone said above, the reason he skirted around the yes or no answers is because its really not that simple, he knows how that will be spun. Most of these 24 hour cable news shows do not have any agenda of informing the public. They have a political agenda. Maddows has just as much a slanted agenda as Bill O’Reilly or Rush……its hard to stomach just about all these “reporters”
TV Tropes.com has an entry called “Crouching Moron Hidden Badass” that describes any person/character who seems stupid or ineffectual most of the time, but becomes surprisingly strong or skillful in a fight or when circumstances otherwise demand it. Rand Paul strikes me as being in a new trope that I would call “Crouching Moron Hidden Weasel”; wherein the person/character seems stupid/ineffectual, but is juuuuuuust smart enough to be able to manipulate anyone stupider than he is to do his bidding. (Different from “Obfuscating Stupidity” in that the person/character doing the obfuscating is *actually* smart, but uses others *perception* of him/her as stupid to manipulate them or otherwise get what they want.)
You couldn’t be more right if you tried. Rand Paul is like those Scientologists who rail against censuring their religion but then proceed to dance around basic tenets of their faith that might strike those in the mainstream as being beyond kooky.
@matt,
I think people whose commitment to libertarianism trumps their ability to acknowledge individual and systemic discrimination are racist. On the racism grayscale, it’s not as direct as other offenses, but in fact people who don’t care about protecting equality as much as they care about economic liberalism are manifestly stating that they don’t care about the rights or equality of people of color who get discriminated against. Ignoring or denying an ongoing problem of race has the effect of contributing to it. That seems racist to me.