C’mon, all y’all gotta know this one — even though it was actually Evelyn Beatrice Hall (a.k.a. Stephen G Tallentyre) who wrote these words, in The Friends of Voltaire, to describe what Voltaire believed vis-à-vis freedom of expression:
I disapprove of what you say,
but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
Now, most folks just take that quotation as a simple platitude that’s useful for explaining why The ACLU was right to fight for a Neo-Nazi group’s right to march in Skokie, Illinois, or why we do not and cannot censor homophobic cranks like Fred Phelps and Maggie Gallagher, but Republican Senate candidate Rand Paul takes the whole Voltaire thing much, much farther, extending — or perhaps reducing — it to gross oversimplification.
I am NOT accusing Dr. Paul of racism, and I believe him when he says he’s not in favor of discrimination, and that he would not belong to a club that excluded people because of race.
Only those folks whose thinking is as oversimplified as Dr. Paul’s should have come to that conclusion when Dr. Paul stepped into a very messy rhetorical quagmire during an interview with the Louisville Courier-Journal [video], in which he said, “I like the Civil Rights Act in the sense that it ended discrimination in all public domains, and I’m all in favor of that, I don’t like the idea of teling private business owners — I abhor racism… I do believe in private ownership.”
I understand what Dr. Paul tried so ineloquently to convey because what Dr. Paul really is is a libertarian purist, a simple-minded almost-anarchist who actually believes that there is such a thing as a clear and bright line between the public sphere and private enterprise, and that human nature is inherently good.
Still, while it is unfair and wrong to label Dr. Paul as a racist, he was largely backed by the Tea Party (the GOP put its support behind Dr. Paul’s opponent, Trey Grayson), which has an undeniable, albeit slight, racist streak.
In his May 18, 2010 victory speech, Dr. Paul said, “I have a message, a message from the Tea Party, a message that is loud and clear and does not mince words. We’ve come to take our government back.” (From whom? I wonder.)
Somehow, I don’t think Dr. Paul fully understood the Tea Party’s message, partly because outside of vague slogans about taxes, the deficit, and how much they do not care for our current president, the Tea Party doesn’t really have a coherent one, but mostly because of Dr. Paul’s apparent naivete with regard to human nature and the politics of race in 21st century America.
Even so, Dr. Paul must know that certain elements of the Tea Party would probably like to see the Civil Rights Act of 1964 repealed — and not just the 10% of it to which libertarian purists, like Dr. Paul, object.
Dr. Paul attempted to clarify the nuances of his position in a May 19, 2010 interview with Robert Siegel of NPR’s All Things Considered:
SIEGEL: You’ve said that business should have the right to refuse service to anyone, and that the Americans with Disabilities Act, the ADA, was an overreach by the federal government. Would you say the same by extension of the 1964 Civil Rights Act?
Dr. PAUL: What I’ve always said is that I’m opposed to institutional racism, and I would’ve, had I’ve been alive at the time, I think, had the courage to march with Martin Luther King to overturn institutional racism, and I see no place in our society for institutional racism.
SIEGEL: But are you saying that had you been around at the time, you would have – hoped that you would have marched with Martin Luther King but voted with Barry Goldwater against the 1964 Civil Rights Act?
Dr. PAUL: Well, actually, I think it’s confusing on a lot of cases with what actually was in the civil rights case because, see, a lot of the things that actually were in the bill, I’m in favor of. I’m in favor of everything with regards to ending institutional racism. So I think there’s a lot to be desired in the civil rights. And to tell you the truth, I haven’t really read all through it because it was passed 40 years ago and hadn’t been a real pressing issue in the campaign, on whether we’re going for the Civil Rights Act.
SIEGEL: But it’s been one of the major developments in American history in the course of your life. I mean, do you think the ‘64 Civil Rights Act or the ADA for that matter were just overreaches and that business shouldn’t be bothered by people with the basis in law to sue them for redress?
Dr. PAUL: Right. I think a lot of things could be handled locally. For example, I think that we should try to do everything we can to allow for people with disabilities and handicaps. You know, we do it in our office with wheelchair ramps and things like that. I think if you have a two-story office and you hire someone who’s handicapped, it might be reasonable to let him have an office on the first floor rather than the government saying you have to have a $100,000 elevator. And I think when you get to the solutions like that, the more local the better, and the more common sense the decisions are, rather than having a federal government make those decisions.
Later that same day, Dr. Paul sat for an interview on The Rachel Maddow Show and once again got all tangled up in the complexities of his own oversimplifications:
MADDOW: Do you think that a private business has the right to say we don’t serve black people?
PAUL: Yes. 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.
But I think what’s important about this debate is not written 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 in the sense that we tolerate boorish and uncivilized behavior because that’s one of the things freedom requires is that we allow people to be boorish and uncivilized, but that doesn’t mean we approve of it. I think the problem with this debate is by getting muddled down into it, the implication is somehow that I would approve of any racism or discrimination, and I don’t in any form or fashion.
So, in Dr. Paul’s expressed worldview, economic darwinism is supposed to surmount social darwinism in a modern society that’s allegedly gotten past its patriarchal white supremacist history. Apparently, Dr. Paul truly believes that the forces of the free market can keep private enterprise from engaging in the practice of arbitrary discrimination (e.g. racially segregated lunch counters) because it’s bad for business.
Would it were that such idealistic notions were true, and that our world-famous American innovation could not, and would not, ever come up with a business model in which prejudice amounts to profit.
Free Speech versus Free Enterprise
Dr. Paul has held fast to pure libertarian (of the paleoconservative/anarcho-capitalist variety) principles of limited government that is as close to anarchy as possible, while still having some kind of a state remaining in place so we can have stuff like a military, and perhaps first responders such as a police force, firefighters and paramedics for when those natural and human-caused disasters strike — and maybe some kind of refuse collection and a few public roads and schools, if that’s not too “liberal” or “socialist” for the mysterious and muddled ideology of Tea Party folks (who seem to be huge fans of Social Security and Medicare, BTW).
Now, I understand that libertarian purists must stick to their principles — in theory, at least — and that that may require a bit of cognitive dissonance, from time to time. And I also understand that freedom can sometimes have undesirable, yet unavoidable, ramifications.
However, in his efforts to remain true to his pure, theoretical libertarian principles, Dr. Paul has relied upon a contortion of Voltaire’s principle of free expression, stretching it to include some imagined right of business owners to arbitrarily decide whom they will or will not hire and which customers they will or will not serve. In doing so, Dr. Paul has failed to take into account the obvious fact that there can be no clear and bright line that separates the public sphere from private enterprise because private enterprise is merely a part of the public sphere, and it cannot exist independently of it.
I don’t really need to go into the practical aspects of Dr. Paul’s libertarian purism, such as those concerning sanitation and security — not to mention streets, transportation and parking so that the free market can actually function — do I?
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