Tag: civil rights

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Rand Paul not racist just ignorant

Rand Paul won the right to be on the ballot for the US Senate from Kentucky. He comes from a family known for their libertarianism – his father is Ron Paul. The problem with his libertarianism is what is wrong with libertarianism in general – it ignores reality and so it sounds stupid.

On the Rachel Maddow show on May 19th Rand Paul claimed that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 went too far by forcing integration of private businesses. He believes that private businesses should be allowed to discriminate. He isn’t a racist per se but is ignorant of history.

The common libertarian argument about social issues in a private setting is that people will “vote with their dollars”. They feel that the free market will force out any businesses that do discriminate because it isn’t acceptable behavior.

The problem for that argument is that it makes sense for white men who have never experienced discrimination.

Back in the 1960’s integrated businesses were the exception not the norm. There were business sections for whites and separate area for blacks – even in Columbus Ohio. Mt Vernon Ave was a strong African-American business area.

That type of discrimination lasted more than 100 years after the end of slavery and the 14th amendment. Either the voting with dollars doesn’t work or is very slow.

Today a business that is overt about it – putting up signs or calling the police to remove non-white people – is ridiculous BECAUSE of laws like the Civil Rights Act.

Of course Paul’s beliefs aren’t surprising:

But the idea that the Civil Rights Act overstepped in its pursuit of guaranteeing racial equality in the South is hardly an alien idea to political right. In fact, in certain conservative circles — especially the anti-government, libertarian wing Rand Paul represents — it’s practically an article of faith.

Consider Ronald Reagan, now part of the pantheon of Republican and conservative heroes. Reagan got his start in national politics stumping for Barry Goldwater, whose fierce anti-government views led him to view the Civil Rights Act as an attack on “the Southern way of life.”

When Reagan made his own run for the presidency in 1976, he positioned himself as Goldwater’s heir, picking up his first primary win in North Carolina on a platform stoking resentment of government intrusion in the South. In 1980, the Californian consciously launched his campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi — just miles from where three civil rights activists were killed in the 1960s.

Like Rand, Reagan insisted his views were anti-government and not pro-discrimination — ignoring, of course, that in practical terms, opposing federal civil rights standards would ensure that discrimination persisted.

Why Rand Paul’s views on civil rights are no surprise

Of course some conservative Republicans are trying to use the Paul blow up to try and rewrite they history of the civil rights movement. They want to blame Democrats for fighting the Civil Rights Act back in the 1960’s while white washing the GOP’s racist campaigning since Reagan.

“Everybody knows that in 1964, a proud southern Democratic President, Lyndon Johnson, pushed hard to secure the Civil Rights Bill, with the aid of a coalition of northern Democrats and Republicans,” Wilentz said. “This sent the defeated segregationist Southern Democrats (led by Strom Thurmond) fleeing into the Republican Party, where its remnants, along with a younger generation of extremist conservative white southerners, including Rand Paul, still reside.”

NRSC Calls Dem Condemnation Of Paul Civil Rights Act Statements ‘Ironic’

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Discarding the civil rights of others is always a popular idea

What really pisses me off by the racist “papers please” law in Arizona is that conservative bigots who complain about President Obama violating rights see nothing wrong with striping minorities of their rights. We’ve been down this road before and it wasn’t right then and it isn’t right now.

Kelly: Mark, why would the president get involved in this? You’ve got — you know, you’ve already got legal challenges that will be mounted by many other groups — why would the Department of Justice, according to our attorney general, Eric Holder as of May 9, be considering challenging this law on their own when you’ve got these kind of approval ratings of the law on a nationwide basis?

Levine: It’s a fair point, Megyn. Anyone can challenge the law, it’s clearly unconstitutional — it violates Article I, Section 8 — and you’re right that anyone can challenge it. I think the president, though is making clear that anytime you have a majority attack the rights of minority, that’s something where you want the Justice Department involved.

I’ll give you a great example: Jim Crow laws in Alabama and Mississippi were vastly supported by the great majority of people in the 1960s. That didn’t make them right. Anytime you have a majority infringing on the rights of a minority, then that’s usually when the Justice Department does need to stand up.

…

What we saw in this episode is that it’s very easy for the public, angry and eager for some kind of action to resolve an urgent fear, to embrace some kind, any kind of action, even if it takes away the rights of someone other than themselves. And with a certain segment of the population, there is real relish in taking those rights away.

But much of the population goes along with these kinds of solutions often thoughtlessly, and then when confronted with the very human realities and consequences of them, realizes its mistake, changes course, and then works to repair the damage.

That certainly is the course of the American experience when it took away the basic civil rights of all its citizens of Japanese descent: We wound up paying huge amounts of money to the victims in the end, and the long-held public view is that the internment was a horrendous mistake of catastrophic proportions, one of the true black blots on the nation’s history of protecting civil liberties.

Of course, at the time, it was extremely popular. Most great mistakes are.

Polls on Arizona immigration law remind us of a historic truth: Discarding the civil rights of others is always a popular idea

And then there was this:

Even if you are a U.S. citizen, you will be presumed to be an alien “unlawfully present” unless you have one of the above stated IDs — assuming a cop has “reasonable suspicion” to think you’re undocumented.

Kobach and his pawns in the state legislature later changed the law, which originally stated that a cop cannot “solely consider race, color or national origin.” They’ve since taken the “solely” out, and they claim this means there will be no racial profiling.

This is highly disingenuous to say the least, when the “intent” of the law is to make “attrition through enforcement” the policy of the state. As the nativist Center for Immigration Studies has defined this loaded term, it means making life so difficult for illegal immigrants that they will self-deport.

Since the vast majority of Arizona’s estimated 500,000 unauthorized aliens are from Mexico or Central America, it is reasonable to conclude that Latinos in Arizona will bear the brunt of police scrutiny.

So when someone slaps the “ethnic cleansing” label on the law, a label Nowicki is uncomfortable with, they are essentially correct.

Kris Kobach’s Misleading Statements to the Arizona Republic on SB 1070

The Arizona law explicitly states that an ID from state that requires proof of citizenship is valid proof so if you are from a state that doesn’t have that requirement then you are also considered “to be an alien “unlawfully present””.

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Hugh Hewitt believes that rule of law is ‘just cliche’

It actually seems cliche when the Right supports the rule of law only for them and not for anyone else. Like how they went nuts when Mayor Bloomburg suggested terrorist not be allowed to buy guns or supporting stripping citizenship without due process based on the people you associated with. There is a problem with that thinking.

As Instaputz points out: this is a cliche authored by John Adams. But what did he know?

BTW: Did you know they’re calling Lieberman’s new citizen strip bill the TEA act? Those Tea Party protectors of the constitution must be so proud.

But they also should worry just a little bit about this, don’t you think? After an evil socialist usurper is in the White House and a communist succubus is running the State Department, which will be given the power to decide who should and shouldn’t be stripped of citizenship and sent off to FEMA camps Gitmo. Can they really be trusted not to go after the nice law abiding tea partiers?

Rule ‘O Law — Yadda, Yadda, Yadda

You know should a “domestic” terrorist (aka white person) be stripped of their citizenship, the right would go insane. That is just as cliche.

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So when are we suppose to be protected from the tyranny of the majority?

The California State Supreme Court ruled today that Prop 8, which made gay marriage illegal, was a valid voter directed exception to their state’s equal protection law. It said it wasn’t rulling on whether the change was good for the people of the state but just if all the i’s were dotted and t’s were crossed legally. They said it had. So I guess as long as a majority follow the proper rules and processes they can decide what rights other minority groups have. Why does that seem wrong to me?

The ruling today sets out two items that caught my eye:

The 136-page majority opinion notes at the outset that the court’s role is not to determine whether Proposition 8 “is wise or sound as a matter of policy or whether we, as individuals believe it should be a part of the California Constitution,” but rather “is limited to interpreting and applying the principles and rules embodied in the California Constitution, setting aside our own personal beliefs and values.” 

The opinion further emphasizes that the principal legal issue in this case is entirely distinct from the issue that was presented in the court’s decision last year in In re Marriage Cases (2008) 43 Cal.4th 757. There, the court was called upon to determine “the validity (or invalidity) of a statutory provision limiting marriage to a union between a man and a woman under state constitutional provisions that do not expressly permit or prescribe such a limitation.” In the present case, by contrast, the principal issue “concerns the scope of the right of the people, under the provisions of the California Constitution, to change or alter the state Constitution itself through the initiative process so as to incorporate such a limitation as an explicit section of the state Constitution.”

From the Judicial Council

What that means is the court only looked at the technical aspects of the Proposition, was the various rules and processes followed for the initiative.

Then court then rules:

The majority opinion next addresses and rejects the Attorney General’s claim that because article I, section 1 of the California Constitution characterizes certain rights including the right of privacy as “inalienable,” Proposition 8 is invalid because it abrogates such rights without a compelling interest. 

The opinion explains that not only does Proposition 8 not “abrogate” the aspect of the right of privacy discussed in the majority opinion in the Marriage Cases, but that the identification of a right as “inalienable” has never been understood to mean that such right is exempt from any limitation or to preclude the adoption of a constitutional amendment that restricts the scope of such a right. The opinion emphasizes that there is no authority to support the Attorney General’s theory.

So basically in California, if you can get enough people to agree with you, you could stop women from voting, blacks from living anywhere they choose, atheists from holding elected office, or allowing a newspaper to publish what it wants to.

One could say the majority couldn’t do those things and that probably is correct since many of things are protected rights under Federal law, but it highlights what can happen for those actions dimished by majority view that aren’t protected under Federal law like same-sex marriage. How about if there is a state law prohibiting red hair color, left hand users, or limits computer usage?

So why isn’t same-sex marriage protected from the tyranny of the majority? The California court said it is no different than heterosexual marriage only due to Prop 8 you can’t call it marriage.

How stupid is that? The court upholds the law to ban gay relationships from being called marriage yet says they still have the same rights as marriage and the ones that took place before November when the law passed are still valid.

That’s why I prefer the way the US Constitution is amended. The process can be complecated and hard but is less subject to knee-jerk reaction like the zelots who needed to impose their religion on others by not allowing other people to call their committed relationship – marriage.

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Welcome and Good Luck President Barack Hussein Obama

I‘ll be honest. Before the 2008 elections I didn’t pay much attention to who Barack Obama was. I knew the name, I knew he was black, and knew he was some up and coming politician from Illinois but that was about it. After hearing his personal story and his ideas for this country, I am so glad he is taking the oath of office today. He is a mix of different races and cultures but also the child of a single mother. He is a prime example of what America is all about.

Although I always knew there was a possibility we could elect a black man as President, I just never thought it would be now. I didn’t think we were ready. Sometimes current events come together and create that single tipping point which causes a major shift in this country. 2008 and was that tipping point and Barack Obama was the catalyst.

He knew he couldn’t win because he thought he deserved to. He had to sell himself to the electorate. He knew he couldn’t seem too left or right so he preached bi-partisanship. He knew he didn’t have an established machine most major political players do so he used his organizing skills to build one from scratch. 

He knew he had some things going against him. He was black. He had a Muslim sounding name in a post 9/11 world. He was the son of a single mother with his father dying when he was a young man.

Then we had an administration that for 8 years screwed things up from foreign policy to the economy. People were ready for a change.

Through all of that Obama worked for more than two years to eventually to win the office of President of the United States of America.

Today is his day. The day he officially takes office. It is also OUR day. The US is one of the few, if the only, country who has a change of government without guns and blood in the streets. Over 200 years of mundane hand over of the office to the next person.

40 years after the lowest point in the struggle for black civil rights we have our first black President. To me it was never about his race. It was never about his resume. It was about his ideas and his personal story.

I am also a child of a single mother. My father was killed in Vietnam when I was barely a month old, so I had no father in my life. Some kids called me a bastard and some conservatives kept saying my family experience was evil and that I would turn out to be some drug addicted criminal because I didn’t have a dad in my life. It was tough to take sometimes.

With Obama taking the oath today, it will vindicate me and be at least be a major step for all those children of single parents who are normal, well adjusted, and successful in life despite our fractured family history.

I know he doesn’t have a magic wand that will solve all our current challenges but it is great that we once again have someone who is smart, thoughtful, and someone who knows about the world outside our borders in the top job. It will be a refreshing change.

TV host Craig Ferguson opens his show each night saying “This is a great day for America!” and I echo that for this day – Inauguration Day

Good luck to us and our new President Barack Hussein Obama II.

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