Patrick McIlheran is properly put out by Leonard Pitts' column claiming that Rand Paul's musings about the Civil Rights Act prove, once again, that social conservatives are always "against us" - "us" being African Americans. Pitts cites arguments against the Act made by segregationists like Richard Russell which, in his view, are similar to Paul's defense of private property.
Pitts commits two errors - a category mistake and an anachronistic fallacy. First, it is not clear to me that Paul is a social conservative. He is pro-life, but there is a huge tension between social conservatives and libertarians. (The most preeminent social conservative in the academy, Robbie George, recently referred to libertarianism as "heresy.") More fundamentally, Richard Russell and other Southern Democrats who opposed the civil rights acts were not necessarily "conservatives" in the sense that we use the term today. They were often progressives who tended to support New Deal and Fair Deal policies. Russell, for example, had little or no concern about limiting the power of the federal government or respecting private property in other areas. He was a staunch supporter of the New Deal and considered his most important legislative accomplishment to be the National School Lunch Act of 1946.
Second, it makes little sense to speculate about what Sarah Palin or some other contemporary conservative "would have" done in 1964. Their political views have been formed during a time - and consistently with - a national consensus that racial discrimination is wrong. (In fact, opposition to affirmative action is an application of that principle, albeit not one that all of those who oppose racial discrimination accept.)These people are what they are. Pitts doesn't like them. But it is intellectually dishonest to smear them by imagining that, if they were different people born at a different time, they would have taken positions that they do not, in fact, take.
7 comments:
It's interesting how Rand's comments have gone from a "political and substantive error" a week ago to a "defense of private property" today.
More interesting is that it's unclear that Rand is a social conservative. He's the GOP (not Libertarian) nominee. He earned that distinction by riding a wave of support from the Tea Party - not exactly synonymous with libertarianism but pretty staunchly socially conservative. Moreover, there isn't much on Rand's campaign website to suggest anything but social conservatism. Ok, there's a leftist cant to the video of him firing a silenced Uzi but the rest of his bromides look pretty solidly conservative. Moreover, the word "libertarian" is nowhere to be found. Also absent is any mention of such libertarian - conservative areas of tension such as drug legalization or same-sex marriage.
Actually the ties that bind the Tea Party movement are fiscal conservatism, not social conservatism. There is a large libertarian and libertarian-leaning contingent. The local groups, by and large, try to avoid social hot-buttons like the plague.
Anony's statement indicates their complete ignorance of the movement and their complete buy-in of the media smear campaign.
Yeah, the tea party is about as heterogeneous a group as has ever put aside petty differences to unite behind a single principle. They've got pro-choicers, tree-huggers, third-wave feminists and affirmative action supporters in droves. All willing to put aside their social differences and break bread with their conservative peers in the interest of fiscal conservatism. Because conservative fiscal policies are entirely different from conservative social policies. A sound fiscally conservative policy of cutting government spending couldn't possibly further an underlying socially conservative agenda. I've also got a bridge for sale if anyone is interested . . . .
They avoid hot-button issues out of rational self-interest. Because the moment they fail to do so (e.g. Rand's little dialogue on the value of the civil rights act) they reveal how abhorrent their ideas really are. They steer clear of advertising the full implications of their policy ideas in a pathetic attempt to make themselves more palatable to the country at large.
The simple difference between Democrats and Republicans are that the Democrats redistribute wealth at home and the Republicans redistribute our wealth globally.
The Tea party is everyone that says they do not like those alternatives and want to do things again as our founding fathers intended.
Clearly. I doubt that any of our founders would take any issue at all with Rand's comments. Just own the crazy and run with it.
Whatever happened to the Tea Party movement? From the outset they more closely resembled the Ross Perot phenomenon of 1992 than some political realignment. And just like the Perotians, they lost steam during the primaries and petered out entirely by the November.
Not gone - we just went deep and silent. Think submarine strategy. This summer is for family, rest, and regrouping for the fall battles.
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