Rand Paul has a bad hair cut and some interesting thoughts.

One of the beautiful things about a democracy is that everyone has a chance to express his or her political views and beliefs, and to be chosen by like minded people to lead them. I would like to apologize to the teabaggers and the rest of the wingnuts who have been pushing hard for a seat at the A-merry-can political table over the past few months. Here I thought you folks were bad for A-merry-ca and that you would dumb down debate and poison the intellectual well. I was wrong. You gave us Rand Paul, who, I am sure, is going to make some folks uncomfortable with his views on civil rights and Title II of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. But we needed Rand, if only because maybe, just maybe, he will shed some light on a movement that might not like the glare.

Here is an exchange between the good Doctor and Rachel Maddow on her show, recently:

"Maddow: Do you think that a private business has a right to say that 'We don't serve black people?'
Paul: I'm not in favor of any discrimination of any form. I would never belong to any club that excluded anybody for race. We still do have private clubs in America that can discriminate based on race."

`Oh come on Field, what's wrong with that? The guy takes a position that any decent A-merry-can would take. `

Yes, but then he said this:

"Maddow:... How about desegregating lunch counters?

Paul: Well what it gets into then is if you decide that restaurants are publicly owned and not privately owned, then do you say that you should have the right to bring your gun into a restaurant even though the owner of the restaurant says 'well no, we don't want to have guns in here' the bar says 'we don't want to have guns in here because people might drink and start fighting and shoot each-other.' Does the owner of the restaurant own his restaurant? Or does the government own his restaurant? These are important philosophical debates but not a very practical discussion..."

Hmmmm, "philosophical debate". OK let's have one: So following your logic, Doctor; If a private person owns a movie theater (a public place, just like a restaurant) and decides that the colored folks should sit in the balcony and the white folks downstairs, that would be cool with you? See folks, Dr. Paul believes that private business should be allowed to do whatever they want when it comes to whatever. He has stated this before which is what prompted Maddow to ask him these questions.

The good Doctor believes that a truly free society will allow people to discriminate against whoever, and the free market will decide whether that person's business should prosper or not. Like many other conservatives and wingnuts, he doesn't believe that the Commerce Clause (which applies to interstate commerce) should have been used by the the advocates of civil rights to do away with segregation in public places. The ruling in this case pretty much said that A-merry-cans could go ahead and use the Commerce Clause to stop segregation in public places, but that is not cool with Dr. Paul and his ilk. Stunning!

For the record, I have no problem with folks doing whatever with their own private clubs and organizations. If they want to keep out blacks, Gays and Jews, they can go for it as far as I am concerned. But I think that doing away with the Commerce Clause as it relates to civil rights would be wrong. I don't see anywhere to hold on to on that slope. It's just way too slippery.

So sorry Doc, I have to agree with the following quote taken from Crooks & Liars:

"Obviously, the tea party adulation, in all its authoritarian and uncritical glory, did not prepare Rand Paul for prime time. He's clearly uncomfortable with follow up questions and being confronted with his own stances. Even though he brought it on himself by telling the Louisville Courier-Journal and NPR that he thought the Civil Rights Act should be done away with, Paul whines about "red herrings" and that the act is forty years old, so why is anyone asking him about it?"

Yes, but Rand is just the first. I am sure that there will be many more like him to come.