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Rand Paul Exposes Tea Party Racism in Libertarianism
5/20/2010
John Judis has written a piece about the Tea Party movement at The New Republic which places it within the context of other conservative movements in the past in this country. It is a good piece. But he misses one very important element, the issue of race. Liberals in general hesitate to blame others for racism, to look racism square in the face, to use race as a critical factor in analysis of political movements. They do not want to be accused by the right of "playing the race card" even when the right itself plays that very same card over and over. Judis is a very good writer, and I recommend his article, but there is more to the Tea Party than he realizes. That was exposed in an interview of Rand Paul on the Rachel Maddow show last night on MSNBC. Paul on Tuesday won the Kentucky Republican primary for the senate and somehow thought it would be a good move for him to appear on the Maddow show. He was wrong. Maddow asked him about civil rights, whether he approved of the 1964 civil rights law which opened public accomodations to black persons. Paul wouldn't answer the question directly, indicating he might have some trouble with the section of the law which requires that blacks be served at lunch counters of a "private" company. This, of course, means the government is telling a private company what to do, and Paul kept avoiding to answer the question directly, but Maddow kept pushing him to answer clearly. Paul kept saying over and over that he doesn't believe in discrimination but when it came down to it he did not want to admit that he opposed government enforcement of civil rights laws on so-called private institutions. As the son of congressman Ron Paul, Rand Paul is a libertarian. Ron Paul has his own sorry history on questions of racism. The son may not be following the father on all aspects of the question, but the philosophy of liberatriansm was itself exposed in this interview. Rand Paul on election night associated himself directly with the Tea Party, that "he had a message from the Tea Party...." The fact is that the political culture of the South continues to be driven by racism in many and various ways, it provides the underlying "energy" for the cultural power of conservatism in this country. The South absolutely hates and abhors the federal government, including the Supreme Court, for its role in forcing the South to change its ways of segregation. It cannot explicitly display racism in public so it comes out in relation to other issues such as abortion and gay rights for the religious right, and hostility to taxes (for education and social services to poor black people) and government for libertarians. The South's hostility to the federal government is the real energy of the more libertarian Tea Party movement. Libertarianism is the political philosophy of most of the extreme right wing radio talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh. It is popular among these hosts because it does not require a lot of serious thought about what government is and how it should function. It is easy to be against anything government does, but it is also completely irresponsible. It is easy to say that government should not regulate business in favor of the free market, until an oil spill destroys the economy for lots of other folks along with the natural environment. It is easy to say that government should not regulate financial institutions, until they act in such a way as to destroy the economic functioning of the country and drastically reduce the wealth of millions of homeowners. The Tea Party movement is based on irrational rantings and ravings of talk show hosts who want to make their millions and then run away from any responsibility for what they have led people to believe. The fact that racism continues to be a major underlying factor in these rantings underscores how irrational and immoral are those media and political figures are who use this sort of rhetoric. Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy | |||