Just like his son did months ago, last week Presidential Candidate Ron Paul has stated they he too would oppose the Civil rights Act.
PAUL: Yes, but not in — I wouldn’t vote against getting rid of the Jim Crow laws.
MATTHEWS: But you would have voted for the — you know you — oh, come on. Honestly, Congressman, you were not for the ’64 civil rights bill.
PAUL: Because — because of the property rights element, not because it got rid of the Jim Crow law.
MATTHEWS: Right. The guy who owns a bar says, no blacks allowed, you say that’s fine. … This was a local shop saying no blacks allowed. You say that should be legal?
PAUL: That’s — that’s ancient history. That’s ancient history. That’s over and done with. [...]
MATTHEWS: Let me ask you this. We have had a long history of government involvement with Medicare, Social Security, the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act. And I think you are saying we would have been better off without all that?
PAUL: I think we would be better off if we had freedom, and not government control of our lives, our personal lives, and our — and policing the world.
He keeps using that word "Freedom" but it seems to me he really doesn't know what it means.
Here is Paul expressing the same idea in a speech.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 gave the federal government unprecedented power over the hiring, employee relations, and customer service practices of every business in the country. The result was a massive violation of the rights of private property and contract, which are the bedrocks of free society. The federal government has no legitimate authority to infringe on the rights of private property owners to use their property as they please and to form (or not form) contracts with terms mutually agreeable to all parties.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 ,b>not only violated the Constitution and reduced individual liberty; it also failed to achieve its stated goals of promoting racial harmony and a color-blind society.
The Civil Rights Act Violated the Constitution? Really? Seriously? There's only one way he could possibly believe that - and that's why I say this man is clearly a massive asshole.
The only way he could believe the Civil Rights at is "Unconstitutional" is to believe that this isn't part of the Constitution.
Amendment XIV: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
The
Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
In order to argue that the Civil Rights Act violates "property rights" you have to provide that that property rights somehow supplant individual rights in the Constitution, which as a matter of fact they don't. The Federal Government clearly has the ability to impact "property rights" through the Commerce Clause.
At best, the right of personal liberty is equal to the right of property ownership. People who operate a business do not get special rights. This is further illustrated here.
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
To call the Civil Rights Act "Unconstitutional" you have to believe that the original Civil Rights Act in 1870 was also Unconstitutional.
Be it enacted…, That any person who, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage of any State, shall subject, or cause to be subjected any person within the jurisdiction of the United States to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution of the United States, shall, any such law, statute, ordinance, regulation, custom or usage of the State to the contrary notwithstanding, be liable to the party injured in any action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress; such proceeding to be prosecuted in the several district or circuit courts of the United States, with and subject to the same rights of appeal, review upon error, and other remedies provided in like cases in such courts, under the provisions of the [Civil Right Act of 1866], and the other remedial laws of the United States which are in their nature applicable in such cases.
This was also known as the Klu Klux Klan Act.
Paul here is simply, flat out wrong. To believe as he does he would have to think the 14th Amendment either doesn't exist, doesn't say what it clearly says or isn't legitimately part of the Constitution.
If it's the latter then he must believe the Constitution still includes the Fugitive Slave Clause, which was removed by the 14th.
No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.
This was intended to prevent any State from becoming a "Safe Haven" for escaped slaves and ultimately led to the Dred Scot Decision where all people of African descent - whether Slave or Free - were excluded from the Constitution.
Thus, whether Missouri recognized Scott as a citizen was irrelevant.
The only relevant question, therefore, was whether, at the time the Constitution was ratified, Scott could have been considered a citizen of any state within the meaning of Article III. According to the Court, the authors of the Constitution had viewed all blacks as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations, and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.
The Court also presented a parade of horribles argument as to the feared results of granting Mr. Scott's petition:
It would give to persons of the negro race, ...the right to enter every other State whenever they pleased, ...the full liberty of speech in public and in private upon all subjects upon which its own citizens might speak; to hold public meetings upon political affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went.
Black Men with Guns, Free Speech and Poliical Power? Heaven forfend! One of them might even become President some day. Shiver
By extension it's clear that the 14th was intended to invalidate this ridiculous decision and extend the full rights and privileges of citizenship to all person physically born in the United States regardless of their ethnicity, gender or any other state of their physical condition.
You have to be an astounding asshole not to realize this.
I'm not saying this proves that Paul isn't a Racist, because you can absolutely be an Asshole without being a Bigot. (Although I don't think you can be an Racist without also being an Asshole) We have to realize that the gradual growth of race-based laws in the U.S., going all the way back to Virginia in 1661 where Indentured Servitude went from being Race-Neutral to Race-Based Slavery was based on economic factors and that Racism was simply the after the fact justification used to excuse singling out one specific group for dehumanizing treatment. Then as now, it's actually all about the money the bigotry is optional and secondary. Racism is merely a byproduct of selfish asshollery, rather than a cause.
Further as to the argument made by his son, that he wouldn't "support anyone who would discriminate on the basis of race" and assumes that over time the mystical magical "free market" will simply remove and marginalize such practices - the fact is that there were nearly 100 Years between the ratification of the 14th Amendment in 1868 and the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964.
So why didn't the "market" fix this during those 98 years?
His son lamented that "Jim Crow Laws" prevented the market from working, but in the process he ignores the impact of Bigoted Business Owners on the political process, who either used their cash resources or ran for office themselves in order to put the laws they preferred in place and place judges sympathetic to their view on the bench.
Such as the judges who argued in Plessy v Furgeson for the establishment of "Seperate but (Un)Equal" doctrine.
In a 7 to 1 decision handed down on May 18, 1896 (Justice David Josiah Brewer did not participate),[2] the Court rejected Plessy's arguments based on the Fourteenth Amendment, seeing no way in which the Louisiana statute violated it. In addition, the majority of the Court rejected the view that the Louisiana law implied any inferiority of blacks, in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. Instead, it contended that the law separated the two races as a matter of public policy.
When summarizing, Justice Brown declared, "We consider the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff's argument to consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority. If this be so, it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it."
And when judicial and political activism didn't get the job done, those who which to perpetuate the views express in Scot would turn to Domestic Terrorism, Violence and Murder to accomplish their goals as we saw with the death of the Freedom Riders and the Fire-Bombing of Black Wall Street in Oklahoma.
No, I don't say that based on this Ron Paul is a Racist, because first of all it would allow him and his supporters to whine that "The Race Card" is being played, and also because he's simply being consistent as he also has called for the elimination of Federal influence via Social Security, Medicare and FEMA despite the harmful and deadly impact it would clearly have.
BLITZER: On the whole issue of FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, do you want to see that agency ended?
PAUL: Well, if you want to live in a free society, if you want to pay attention to the constitution, why not? I think it’s bad economics. I think it’s bad morality. And it’s bad constitutional law. Why should people like myself, who had, not too long ago, a house on the Gulf Coast and it’s – it’s expensive there and it’s risky and it’s dangerous. Why should somebody from the central part of the United States rebuild my house?M Why shouldn’t I have to buy my own insurance and protect about the potential dangers? I mean it’s – it’s a moral hazard to say that government is always going to take care of us when we do dumb things. I’m trying to get people to not to dumb things. Besides, it’s not authorized in the constitution.
You mean a "dumb thing" like Live in Alabama? Or Texas? Or Oklahoma? God, what Idiots! Snort! Who needs the nanny guvmint to protects us from fires, floods, earthquakes, tornadoes, nuclear fallout, industrial malfeasance, oil spills, chemical spills, hydraulic fracking, contaminated food, mortgage fraud, bigots, rapists, terrorists, thieves, murderers, tigers and bears?
Can't we just fix all that stuff on our own with a handy swiss army knife,, some duct tape and a few MRE's? Who needs the Government for anything? Obviously not Ron Paul.
BLITZER: And if there’s a disaster, like flooding or – or an earthquake or Hurricane Katrina, what’s wrong with asking fellow Americans to help their – their – their fellow citizens?
PAUL: Nothing. And I think Americans are very, very generous and they have traditionally. The big problem is Americans are getting poor and they’re not able to voluntarily come to the rescue.But to coerce people, to ask them to help, that is fine and dandy. But when you bankrupt our country and nobody has a job and then they say, well, FEMA needs to bail out everybody, then all we’re doing is compounding our problems.
Even when people lives are at stake, Paul is more concerned about the national check book? Note to Mr. Paul: There are some things that are More Important Than Making another BUCK!
Like I said, it's a very strange definition of "Freedom" he's working from because it apparently means the "Freedom" to treat your customers and patrons like chattel and the "Freedom" to let people hit by a natural disaster that they couldn't have predicted and in some cases insurance isn't even available for to simply die or live in destitution.
And here he is comparing Social Security - to wait for it - Slavery!
WALLACE: You talk a lot about the Constitution. You say Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid are all unconstitutional.
PAUL: Technically, they are. … There’s no authority [in the Constitution]. Article I, Section 8 doesn’t say I can set up an insurance program for people. What part of the Constitution are you getting it from? The liberals are the ones who use this General Welfare Clause. … That is such an extreme liberal viewpoint that has been mistaught in our schools for so long and that’s what we have to reverse—that very notion that you’re presenting.
WALLACE: Congressman, it’s not just a liberal view. It was the decision of the Supreme Court in 1937 when they said that Social Security was constitutional under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution.
PAUL: And the Constitution and the courts said slavery was legal to, and we had to reverse that.
Yeah, but we didn't reverse it by "wishing it away" - it was reversed by the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments which changed the Constitution. Even when the courts clearly are against him and have been for over 100 years - Paul still argues concepts that are simply wrong-headed and dangerous.
Like I said before and I'll say it again. ASSHOLE!
Vyan