That’s Right Nate

Every now and then, I get just a little too big for my britches.  Because of my tremendous access to Congressman Jack Kimble (R-CA), I sometimes try and get in touch with other politicians to promote them through the blog.   One politician, whose cause I have championed is Rand Paul.  Rand is the son of Ron Paul and he’s following in his father’s footsteps by running for Senator for Kentucky.

I tried to set up a telephone interview with Mr. Paul and unfortunately discovered that Rand Paul has changed his media strategy since  Paul has canceled on Meet the Press and refused to speak to non-ideological media, preferring the safe platform of Fox News. Last weekend, after a speech to Republican activists in the Galt House Hotel in Louisville, Paul balked at the prospect of talking to local reporter Ryan Alessi. Paul instead instructed Alessi to “submit your questions to us and we’ll look at them”

I figure the easiest thing for me to do is to submit my questions here and alert Rand Paul’s campaign I have done so.  Maybe I will be granted some answers:

1. You have made it clear that the Civil Rights Act was a mistake and that private companies like Greyhound should be free to require black people to sit on the black of the bus, while government owned mass transit should not have preferential seating by race.  What do you think the rules should be for a company like Amtrak which is privately owned, but heavily subsidized by the government.

2. Could our government make a bureaucracy so big that it would be unable to create a government agency to untangle it?

3. How much do you believe car accidents are the results of government imposed speed limits?

4. How do we bring back sweater vests?

If you like those Mr. Paul, I would very much like to continue this dialogue.

Rand Paul has been under attack lately since he was the victim of Rachel Maddow’s particular brand of Gotcha Journalism.   This new style of reporting ignores what your guest has carefully prepared to say on your show and instead of listening to his answers like a responsible journalist would, you throw a whole lot of facts at him so that when his statements fail to hold up to your crazy suppositions, you can say “gotcha” and make your guest look like an idiot.

In the Maddow/Paul fiasco Miss Maddow asked Paul if he believed that government should get involved in matters involving private businesses and their rights to refuse service or set their own rules for their establishment.   Being a strict libertarian of course Rand Paul said “No”.  Maddow immediately pounced on him by asking if that meant he was against the civil rights act.  Suddenly, Rand Paul’s answers seemed racist.  Nothing is further from the truth.

Rand Paul is not saying that black people should all go to the back of the bus—not all buses anyway.   What Rand Paul says is that public transportation, which is paid for by city tax dollars should allow black people to sit anywhere they please.   Meanwhile, a private bus company like Greyhound should in theory be allowed to have a black seating section on the back of the bus.   It may seem rather unreasonable to turn back the clock on civil rights 50 years, but alas that is the price of living in a Constitution Republic like ours.  Let us not forget that Thomas Jefferson said, “The price of freedom is eternal witlessness.”

Desegregation and integration would work the same ways in other areas of society.   Jim Crow laws would only be applicable in private settings and not in public buildings:

• Restaurants: Restaurants would again be allowed to refuse service on the basis of race unless they were in a publicly funded building like a museum.
• Schools: School integration would continue pretty much unchanged with charter schools being allowed to continue to exclude minorities, while public schools could not.
• Bathrooms: For minorities, find a bathroom they could use would be as simple as heading to the nearest public building.

This may seem oppressive, but remember there are sacrifices to be made for true liberty.   It may be tempting to restart the protest segregation all over again, but I hope that reasonable people will wait until we have enough time to figure out where the public police department’s jurisdiction ends and the private police department’s begins.  We certainly don’t want police trying to arrest police anymore than we want both the private and public fire departments showing up at the same time.