My Two Cents on Rand Paul
As with the Arizona thing, I really was going to sit this one out. But the commentary has just been too goofy. Here goes:
==>There is a difference between something being immoral and being illegal. Just because someone thinks a certain behavior should be legal, doesn’t mean he thinks it’s “not a big deal.” For example, I don’t think the government should prohibit Marxists from renting out hotel ballrooms to discuss the flaws with capitalism. I certainly don’t approve of their actions though. I’m not a Marxist sympathizer or fellow traveler. Duh.
As obvious as this is, you find people who don’t make that elementary distinction. And it’s not merely in blog comments, but in actual articles where I think the author got paid. For example:
What makes Rand Paul’s position (as he originally expressed it on the Maddow show) noteworthy is that it’s a pure, unadulterated expression of Lockean anti-statism with little admixture of Hobbesian sentiments at all. Paul, like many libertarians and Tea Party activists, is so obsessed with the possibility that the state might commit an injustice that he’s indifferent to the reality of actually existing injustice at the hands of private citizens. As far as these radical Lockeans are concerned, the former is tyranny, pure and simple, while the latter is just life: yeah, it’s sometimes unfair, but freedom requires that we (or rather, in this case, blacks living under Jim Crow in the South) get over it.
Look, if people want to argue that some libertarians (and I don’t think Rand Paul even calls himself a libertarian, incidentally) seem to conveniently focus on one set of State abuses that crimp hetero white male lifestyles, while they don’t get too worked up about other State abuses that only affect other people, OK fair enough.
But that type of criticism is about 15% of what’s being thrown at the supporters of Rand Paul on this issue. The other 85% is just silly, that doesn’t even understand the argument.
It’s been discouraging to see all the drama caused by this—when the ruckus started, Rand Paul was trending on Twitter for a few days. Of course, everyone was calling him a racist.
What I really don’t understand is why people play the “Jim Crow” card, as if somehow private discrimination is the cause of public, institutionalized racism.
Also disturbing is how people seem horrified at the desire to be ideologically consistant.
Critics make it seem that if the Civil Rights act was repealed, or we had a libertarian-minded government, then all of the sudden everyone would turn into racists, blacks would be banned from everywhere and slaves would jump out of the bushes and start tilling the fields. Its preposterous.
I’ve never read Hobbes in the original, but my impression is that he didn’t favor “Great Society” social engineering. He thought we had to surrender to Leviathan to avoid violence at each other’s hands and achieve enough security in our persons & property to develop civilization. Arguably in keeping with minarchism if one rejects “natural rights” (as I do).
“As far as these radical Lockeans are concerned, the former is tyranny, pure and simple, while the latter is just life: yeah, it’s sometimes unfair, but freedom requires that we (or rather, in this case, blacks living under Jim Crow in the South) get over it.”
Am I missing something? He says libertarians ignore the private side as “just life”, but then goes on to “Jim Crow” as his example, which is the government. Who said “get over it”, when it came to Jim Crow laws?
Our current “critics” are mindlessly conformist, intellectually incurious, anti-intellectual know-nothing dishonest bullies who haven’t the slightest familiarity with libertarians or the VAST scholarly work of libertarians and Austrians. We need to always keep that in mind. For example, in 37 years since I discovered Rothbard, I’ve never come across what I consider to be a fair and honest ATTEMPT at a refutation of the ABCT much less a bad try.
One should only be surprised upon discovering a fair and intelligent criticism. Those never appear because we are right and our opponents are wrong. Not only wrong, but the cause of most of our problems. Of course, they sure don’t want to self-reflect on that.