To segregate or not to segregate … that is the question. And apparently, Kentucky GOP senatorial candidate Rand Paul has the answer. As a recent guest on “The Rachel Maddow Show,” Paul suggested that the government should not have the authority to infringe on a person’s God-given right to segregate. Yeah, that’s not a misprint. In 2010, there is a person running for public office who openly pines for the days when whites had the lunch counter all to themselves.
Ahh, the good old days … back when racism was the engine that fueled America’s vitality.
While Paul tried to smooth over his position by saying that this brand of segregation should only be reserved for private businesses, the gross irresponsibility of his message can’t be lost. Here’s an excerpt of the exchange between Paul and Maddow:
Maddow: Do you think that a private business has a right to say that ‘We don’t serve black people?’
Paul: I’m not in favor of any discrimination of any form. I would never belong to any club that excluded anybody for race. We still do have private clubs in America that can discriminate based on race.
… But I think what’s important in this debate is not getting into any specific ‘gotcha’ on this, but asking the question ‘What about freedom of speech?’ Should we limit speech from people we find abhorrent? Should we limit racists from speaking? I don’t want to be associated with those people, but I also don’t want to limit their speech in any way in the sense that we tolerate boorish and uncivilized behavior because that’s one of the things that freedom requires is that we allow people to be boorish and uncivilized, but that doesn’t mean we approve of it …
Maddow: How about desegregating lunch counters?
Paul: Well, what it gets into then is if you decide that restaurants are publicly owned and not privately owned, then do you say that you should have the right to bring your gun into a restaurant even though the owner of the restaurant says ‘well no, we don’t want to have guns in here’ the bar says ‘we don’t want to have guns in here because people might drink and start fighting and shoot each other.’ Does the owner of the restaurant own his restaurant? Or does the government own his restaurant? These are important philosophical debates but not a very practical discussion…
Maddow: Well, it was pretty practical to the people who had the life nearly beaten out of them trying to desegregate Walgreens lunch counters despite these esoteric debates about what it means about ownership. This is not a hypothetical Dr. Paul.
So there you have it. If Paul had it his way, all 10 million of you that raced to KFC to buy a Double Down sandwich, would now have to purchase it from the back door since you’d no longer be allowed inside the all-white establishment. (Hey, is it wrong that I assumed that the majority of people buying a chicken sandwich were black? Just asking.)
What are your thoughts on Paul’s comments? Do you think he represents a racist agenda backed by the Tea Party? Or do you believe his argument is legitimate? The floor is officially yours … I’m on my way to KFC while I can still get in the front door. –dewayne rogers
