5 responses so far ↓

• 1 Eric the .5b // May 24, 2010 at 6:42 pm

  “But if we recognize the circumstances of the time as exceptional…”

  I see where you’re trying to go with all this, but I think it’s about ten years too late. Everything is exceptional in modern politics. Every major problem is the newest existential threat to civilization. There’s no “normal” level left to say, “Gee, that doesn’t really justify such a massive intrusion, now does it?” about.

• 2 Julian Sanchez // May 24, 2010 at 9:05 pm

  Fair point. But if that’s our standard, it’s really pretty impossible to argue that any modern injustice is even remotely in the ballpark with the legacy of state-sanctioned slavery and Jim Crow.

• 3 Daniel Buck // May 25, 2010 at 6:01 pm

  What struck me about Rand Paul during his 20-minute dosey-do with Rachel Maddow was how little he had thought through his libertarian views., or perhaps, how badly he defended them. I gather he’s been a libertarian his entire adult life; that was the best he could do?

  Aside from a quick, mousey “yes” deep in the dance — answering Maddow’s query about whether he would have opposed Title II of the 1964 civil Rights Act (and he veered off in a tangled change-of-subject detour immediately thereafter) — he spent most of his time blatherskating about freedom of speech and gun rights in a futile attempt to change the subkect.

  His one example — the two-story building — of how common csense should trump the Americans with Disability Act is already (as I understand it) excluded from the ADA’s coverage.

  This is the face of libertarianism? This is what they serve at the Tea Party?

  Of course, he said, he would have marched with Martin Luther king, Jr.. Yea, everbody was in the French Resistance. (He’s two-for-two in the hide behind a black man department. Defending his primary victory party at a Kentucky country club, he trundled out Tiger Woods.)

  And I don’t believe for a New York second his battlefield conversoin to supporting the Civil Rights Act of 1964 48 hours later. He had twenty long painful minutes to make that point two days earlier.

  Finally — yes, there is a finally — taking a page from the Wiley E. Coyote campaign manual, that the only way to get the voters to forget a stupid remark is to make an even stupider one, a day or so later he excused BP’s catastrophe in the Gulf with “accidents happen” and criticized the administration for the tone of its remarks about BP, calling them “un-American.”

  I would think that a libertarian’s reflexive and healthy skepticism about the government would accomodate skepticism about a multinational corporation working under a federal government permit — BP is for all intents and purposes an agency of the federal government. Regardless, even if one does not buy my sketch, skepticism about government power does not necessarily mean one should be naive about corporate power. “Private property” is not some hippy mantra.

  But instead — and I’m returing to your point — with Paul, ideology trumped reality.

  Mencken used to dismiss the wooly-headed among us as “utopians.” Rand Paul is one of Mencken’s utopians.

  Dan

• 4 Eric the .5b // May 26, 2010 at 11:49 am

  “But if that’s our standard, it’s really pretty impossible to argue that any modern injustice is even remotely in the ballpark with the legacy of state-sanctioned slavery and Jim Crow.”

  Why would it have to be for anyone to justify almost anything to try to fix it?

• 5 Julian Sanchez // May 26, 2010 at 2:46 pm

  It wouldn’t necessarily have to be. I’m just saying there’s no *automatic* inference from “measure X was justified to remedy slavery and Jim Crow” to “measure X is justified to remedy…” less egregious modern injustices.