Race, Libertarians And Democrats

Race, Libertarians And Democrats — Rand Paul, who is the GOP senatorial nominee for Kentucky and the son of America’s most famous libertarian, said on Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC show that  business should be allowed to discriminate with regard to how they serve customers which is something prohibited by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Section II ).

While he also defended the landmark law in general terms and condemned racial discrimination he was raked over the coals by the wolves who run the establishment media for the sake of the sheep.

Here is something to ponder: throughout America’s history every ethnic group faced discrimination from those on top at the time. This is true of the Irish, the Italians, the Swedes, the Eastern Europeans (upon who was bestowed the slur “honky”,  and, in fact, if you go back far enough was the inspiration for the word “slave”), Japanese, Chinese, Cubans and even the Germans.

All of course persevered and eventually prospered in the face of the bigots in business.

So what made the black experience different? The answer is government. Laws were passed to require that restaurants and hotels and buses have separate accommodations for blacks and whites. Officers of the law ignored with impunity crimes committed against blacks, and even at times joined in their commission. Agents of the state conspired to keep blacks from exercising their votes much less their rights to speak and lobby, often by sanctioning terror.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was progress in that it ended these things, but what if it stopped short of prohibiting business owners to be bigots? Maybe blacks would end up with the same stature in small business that they enjoy in professional sports and entertainment which were never really subject to civil rights legal action. Does it occur to anyone that businesses that refuse customers don’t survive?

Something else to ponder: the group that imposed the government oppression of blacks was not the libertarians.

It was the authoritarian, anti-business, big government Democrats. And don’t think those Democrats were just  disgruntled Confederates from the 19th Century.

Progressive hero Woodrow Wilson — the Democrat who gave us the income tax, the IRS and Federal Reserve Board — turned Washington D.C. from a racially integrated city in 1913 to a racially segregated, Jim Crow town.

Fitz Hollings,  the Democrat senator from South Carolina and ally of Bill Clinton, was the one who who started flying the Confederae battle flag over South Carolina’s Capitol to protest the civil rights movement in 1962.

Robert Bryd’s support was integral to the government take over of health care in March. The Democrat senator from West Virginia and one-time Senate Majority leader was once a recruiter for the Ku Klux Klan.

It was Democratic mayors, governors and police chiefs that turned firehoses and police dogs on civil rights marchers in the 1950s and 1960s.

If the Rand Pauls of the world ran things Jim Crow would never have existed, and if they ran things in 1964 Jim Crow  would have ended with a lot less turmoil and heartache, and blacks and whites today would be about as divided as Italians and WASPs are today.

Race, Libertarians And Democrats
Race, Libertarians And Democrats

 

 

Race, Libertarians And Democrats

 

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