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Rand Paul and Private Discrimination

2010 May 21
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by max

Rand Paul has been in the news of late.  The Tea Party candidate won Kentucky’s Republican senatorial primary on Tuesday and has been on the airwaves ever since pushing what some call a radical agenda — criticizing, at least in part, landmark American laws such as the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  His most discussed moment came on the Rachel Maddow show on Wednesday night:

Let me put one fundamental point front and center that unfortunately often needs to be repeated: it is entirely possible to abhor racism and discrimination of any sort and still be against laws that legally prohibit private discrimination.  First, these laws inherently narrow the scope of what the First Amendment protects by limiting our right to associate with whom we wish.  Second, the question of whether the federal government can constitutionally reach private discrimination is completely different than the question of whether the federal government can constitutionally reach public discrimination.  The latter can be accomplished under section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment because the requisite state action exists.  The former has nothing to do with state action and thus can only be reached through Congress’s commerce power. These are two entirely different legal questions.

Paul touched on the free speech issue (though not sufficiently) but he didn’t attempt to explain the question surrounding the federal government’s power to prohibit private discrimination.  He mentioned the advantages of having such decisions made locally but didn’t question the federal government’s power to pass such laws.  As a result this important legal nuance went unaddressed and remains so in all the post interview buzz in the media.

This is a conversation worth having.  We shouldn’t evaluate the propriety of a federal law based solely on whether we like what it’s trying to do.  As inconvenient as it might be, we also have to consider whether government has the power to do it.

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from → Law

  • msapozhn

    Touching the toxic issue of federal laws against private discrimination – which, in essence, amounts to granting rights not provided by the Constitution to certain population sectors – will soon return the discussion to the previous topic discussed on Demablogue, which is judicial activism. Had the Congresses and the Presidents of past and present not relied on judges to deem “empathy” and “sum of life experience” (to quote Obama's nomination speeches) superior to the black-on-yellow letter of the Constitution, such clearly anti-Constitutional laws would never be passed, or even proposed, in the first place. With the Federal government all too happy to extend its reach at every opportunity and the Congress hopelessly mired in corruption, the whole great experiment called “America” is hostage to opinions and whims of nine old, frail, politicized, and (in some cases) none too bright men and women in black robes.

  • msapozhn

    To the immediate matter of Rand Paul's candidacy and his interview, the general wind on right-wing blogs is that Dr. Paul should not have accepted the invitation in the first place. With the Lamestream Media so openly hostile to political dissent one can be sure that, to misquote Miranda, “everything you say can, and likely will, be twisted against you”. If not for his political inexperience, he'd see that MSNBC watchers, most of whom are hardly Constitutional scholars, are conditioned – better to say, brainwashed to the point of zombification – to react negatively to buzzwords like “discrimination” or “civil rights”, and Rachel Madcow can be reliably counted upon to bring them up.

  • msapozhn

    Touching the toxic issue of federal laws against private discrimination – which, in essence, amounts to granting rights not provided by the Constitution to certain population sectors – will soon return the discussion to the previous topic discussed on Demablogue, which is judicial activism. Had the Congresses and the Presidents of past and present not relied on judges to deem “empathy” and “sum of life experience” (to quote Obama's nomination speeches) superior to the black-on-yellow letter of the Constitution, such clearly anti-Constitutional laws would never be passed, or even proposed, in the first place. With the Federal government all too happy to extend its reach at every opportunity and the Congress hopelessly mired in corruption, the whole great experiment called “America” is hostage to opinions and whims of nine old, frail, politicized, and (in some cases) none too bright men and women in black robes.

  • msapozhn

    To the immediate matter of Rand Paul's candidacy and his interview, the general wind on right-wing blogs is that Dr. Paul should not have accepted the invitation in the first place. With the Lamestream Media so openly hostile to political dissent one can be sure that, to misquote Miranda, “everything you say can, and likely will, be twisted against you”. If not for his political inexperience, he'd see that MSNBC watchers, most of whom are hardly Constitutional scholars, are conditioned – better to say, brainwashed to the point of zombification – to react negatively to buzzwords like “discrimination” or “civil rights”, and Rachel Madcow can be reliably counted upon to bring them up.

  • Andrei Mincov

    Most people unwittingly consider laws against private discrimination one of the greatest social achievements of the modern times.  In my new article in support of abolition of anti-discrimination laws, I explain how these laws are nothing more than a tool of everyone’s enslavement.

    Read it at http://mincov.com/articles/ind…