Rand Paul is an ideologue, not a racist

[Jack Rabbit]

There are racists and there are ideologues. All white supremacists are, in a crude kind of way, ideologues. Not all ideologues are racists. To jump to the point, Rand Paul, the GOP candidate for the US Senate in Kentucky, is an ideologue, not a racist.

Let's define a term first. An ideologue is someone who clings to an ideal so rigorously that it defies the boundaries of common sense or pragmatism. The ideal could be a racial ideal, in which the ideologue clings to the notion that there is natural hierarchy based on race (usually with his own at the top of the food chain). Of course, it's easy to see where this leads. In spite of the existence of genius in many colors, these ideologues will exclude the genius of George Washington Carver, Booker T. Washington, Martin Luther King or Nelson Mandela simply because the ideologue holds that no person of sub-Saharan African descent can possess genius. The evidence to the contrary is overwhelming, but that doesn't bother the ideologue.

Dr. Paul is a libertarian. The watchword for libertarians of his kind is freedom. What is call the tea party movement largely grew from the 2008 presidential candidacy of Dr. Paul's father, Texas congressman Ron Paul. Unlike the tea partiers who jumped on the bandwagon with the astroturfing of the movement since President Obama's inaguration, the Pauls can tell you what freedom means to them. It has nothing to do with the "freedom" of members of one "superior" race to rule over all other people, but the freedom to start a business and run it as one sees fit with as little government interference as possible.

Unlike the astroturf tea partiers, whose numbers reak of racism, the Pauls and most other libertarians are not racists. In fact, I've had many libertarian friends in my life and, if they are any indication, very few libertarians are racists.

Dr. Paul's remarks to Rachel Maddow came as no surprise to me. Although he would not answer the question, he most certainly would give Woolworth's the right to put up a "Whites Only" sign in front of their lunch counters. And then he would boycott Woolworth's. That is the same answer I would have gotten from any of my libertarian friends.

Dr. Paul believes that businessmen make rational decisions, and that it is clearly irrational to subject one's business to organized boycotts while at the same time cutting oneself off from a considerable slice of the market by refusing to do business with it. Even if a businessman doesn't like the color of somebody's skin, there is nothing wrong with the color of his money as long as it's green. Therefore, as Dr. Paul sees it, the businessman will do business with people for whom he has an irrational prejudice because it is the rational (i.e., profitable) thing to do.

Of course, businessmen do make irrational decisions. If they didn't, Woolworth's would never have had a whites only policy at its lunch counters and Lester Maddox would have let his ax handle lay idle. I don't agree with Dr. Paul's views on the Civil Act of 1964, but I've never had a discussion about this with a libertarian where the victims of discrimination were disparaged.

Rand Paul is not a racist. He is an ideologue. I am much more concerned with his remarks about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a current problem, than I am about his remarks about the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which he concedes is now settled law. The undersea blow out is not an "accident"; it is carelessness. Does Dr. Paul think there is any role for government to play in enforcing common-sense safety procedures? Or does BP (not to mention Shell, ExxonMoble, Standard Oil or Conoco) have the right to enforce its own safety rules, which may be subject to cutting costs? Is Dr. Paul's solution to boycott BP into submission? I'm certainly not against that, but it seems to me that what is happening in the Gulf is a crime. Other people, who have no connection to the oil industry other than to use its products, have had their livelihoods destroyed at least for now. There aren't very many of us who are going to eat Louisiana shrimp if it smells like an oil refinery.

Dr. Paul believes we shouldn't be so hard on BP. The free market is the American ideal of freedom to Dr. Paul. Never mind that we've seen how an unbridled, unregulated free market works and that it isn't pretty. Far from being rational, it is self destructive. Yet Dr. Paul, the ideologue, would march America and the world off a cliff in the name of that kind of freedom. That is what an ideologue is. An ideologue is not a rational thinker. In fact, it is just as irrational to destroy the earth in the name of freedom and right to pursue profits as it is to refuse to sell to paying customers because they are of the wrong skin color, religious faith or because if some other incidental feature about them. That is why Dr. Paul should be defeated in November.