Cros posted from Rational Resistance:
Not a long one here, but it’s worth viewing the disembowelment of Rand Paul by Rachel Maddow.
The short version is that when confronted with the obvious import of his positions, which is that he thinks the government has no right to prohibit racial or other discrimination by businesses, he becomes painfully inarticulate, blathering on about “institutionalized racism” and acting as though this is merely an abstract or academic debate.
He claims that he is so pure he doesn’t agree with racism, and he would never personally discriminate. Apparently it’s just a coincidence that when that position was asserted in the United States in the 1960’s, 100% of those who were asserting it were white racists asserting the right to discriminate against black people.
That position has been almost universally rejected because it is impossible to have a free society of equal opportunity for all–not equality of outcome, which conservatives are incessantly whining about–if racial and other types of discrimination are allowed, even by private entities.
Jim Crow, and other racially discriminatory practices, were a way for the South to continue the oppression of black people even after the abolition of slavery. In all parts of the country, racial discrimination prevented black people from having access to all kinds of public and private resources, including employment, housing, and the other avenues of commerce. In the South and in the North, these practices were established and fostered by the power structure to maintain the oppression of black people.
Anyone who pretends that it is merely an abstract question, and not one that has the real effect of perpetuating racial discrimination, is being intentionally dense.
In 2010 nobody is that stupid, not even Rand Paul.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/new…
It’s a slippery slope from Ron Paul to Rand Paul to a total shut-down of social services and proactive attention to the needs of our growing underclass. Ron Paul has a somewhat enchanting naivity in his insistance that private entities will step-up to social responsibility. A lot of people would like to believe this fairytale because it would allow them to avoid taxes and any responsibility for those less-fortunate than themselves. Rather like Apartheid did in S. Africa, his son’s positions also make it possible for them to rationalize away both the personal and public responsibility for the real “institutionalized racism” that goes to the heart of the Tea Party movement.
Petey’s right. These tea partiers are nothing more than the KKK in another way of putting it. The same wealthy patrons are pushing them as pushed the KKK in the old days, having them do the dirty work — the bombings, the lynchings, the murders, etc. — to keep anyone that the white fathers did not like down and oppressed. Slavery is a great economic institution for a few to get rich off of it; that is what this Rand Paul is, except that someone that wants to profit off of wage slavery and to get rid of all these pestiferous social programs is financing. Welcome to America.
Julie, unfortunately, I disagree with you having studied right-wing type patriot movements, including the Klan. I do, though, agree with you about the sane conversations part, and did not think my post was all that insane given the nature of what these groups are in general and their violent history (excluding, of course, the Vermont Tea Party people and other Vermonters of the conservative persuasion who are very peaceful and articulate in their beliefs) and the big money that is behind so many of these types of groups in so many areas of the country.