Rand Paul releases the most astonishing pledge of the 2010 campaign season:

“I unequivocally state that I will not support any efforts to repeal the Civil Rights Act of 1964.”

Glad that’s settled. Now to the next question: If it’s not Ayn or the Corporation, what is it?

[via Political Wire]
28 Comments

What’s his stand on the 14th Amendment to the Constitution? A poorly thought-out federal assault on states rights?

Paul has already stated that he supports 90% of the act. The question isn’t whether he would seek to repeal the act wholesale. The question is whether he would vote to repeal only those portions that prevent private businesses from discriminating.

Let’s face it, that may represent only 10% of the act, but that sort of discrimination represented waaaay more than 10% of the problem in the old South. And furthermore, if Paul and his Libertarian buddies had their way, government would be so small and inconsequential that preventing discrimination by the government would be practically a meaningless gesture.

So either Paul just doesn’t get it, or he’s being purposefully disingenuous.

@Serolf Divad: He doesn’t get it. He’s been living in a Libertarian Bubble for years, and has never had the pleasure of expressing his opinions to decent folk. I haven’t seen one this pure since McMinnville. In 1982.

Holy crap, there’s someone actually named Rand Paul? I thought this was another one of the cute “Bunnypants” style nicknames. Who the fuck names their child Rand?

@IanJ: None other than the Father of Paultards, Ron.

@flippin eck: I don’t know why I should expect anything else. I’ll just be over here dashing my head against this brick wall.

@IanJ and flippin eck: His name is actually Randall, but he doesn’t go by that or Randy.

@nojo: they still exist here. I’ve run into a few of ’em on my weekends. It’s my own fault for leaving the People’s Republic of Multnomah.

oh well, alrighty then. moving on.

@Signal to Noise: Aren’t they adorable? The simplicity of their world is just precious. I’d invoke my favorite Sherwood Anderson line about purists turning into grotesques, but the Mac Libtards don’t even rise to that occasion.

@Serolf Divad:

So either Paul just doesn’t get it, or he’s being purposefully disingenuous.

You make the mistake of assuming that these people actually think about the real-world consequences of their actions. Objectivists don’t consider the real world any more than fundamentalist Christians do, it’s about ideology first, and once you’ve dealt with that, you take up doctrine. Actual governance and the application of effort to real problems is not something there’s any focus on.

There is a reason Objectivism’s main expression of ideology is a novel. Well, nominally a novel, anyway.

@Benedick: Home of the News-Register, where I toiled as an honest reporter for eighteen months before running away to join the circus.

These total libertarians are suffering from personality disorders, narcissistic or sociopathic. Its a delusion to think its possible to be self-sufficient in this society, that you are solely responsible for where you are, and that we aren’t all interdependant members of a complex society.

I mean this literally, and not as a pejorative or a snarky criticism, that level of libertarian, their thinking represents a clinical personality disorder. They are insane. And assholes, insane in ways that make them the very worst of assholes on the face of the earth.

Can anyone explain why Rand and other libertarians I’ve encountered are all “keep government out of private business/my life” UNTIL it comes to women’s reproductive rights? How can anyone, with a straight face, say they oppose government intrusion into individual liberties–oh, except for those of you with a uterus?
@nojo: @Signal to Noise: Some nutcase housewife teabagger ran for Yamhill County Commission (complete with campaign signs featuring a cup and saucer with an American flag teabag label dangling from the cup) and the race is so close between her and the incumbent that we don’t expect the final result s for a week. It doesn’t help that they’re both named Mary and have similar last names.
@Benedick: Also site of chez Cyn.

Tea party favorite Rand Paul has rocketed to the lead ahead of Tuesday’s Republican Senate primary here on a resolute pledge to balance the federal budget and slash the size of government.

But on Thursday evening, the ophthalmologist from Bowling Green said there was one thing he would not cut: Medicare physician payments.

In fact, Paul — who says 50% of his patients are on Medicare — wants to end cuts to physician payments under a program now in place called the sustained growth rate, or SGR. “Physicians should be allowed to make a comfortable living.

@Mistress Cynica: They are all about property rights, Cyn, your absolute right to do whatever you wish with your property, and women, of course, are property. No inconsistancy at all.

This is also completely consistent with pathological narcissism, narcissists don’t view other people as “people,” everyone else on earth is a “thing” to the pathological narcissist, worthy of consideration only in respect to the degree of usefulness that thing may be to him.

@Prommie: Of course, silly me. I keep forgetting that I’m just chattel.

In other chattel-related news, Daily Beast had an appropriate comment on the excommunication of the AZ nun we were discussing earlier this week: She’d have been better off molesting children, apparently: The Catholic Church, whose reluctance to punish pedophile priests is much publicized, has excommunicated a nun from Phoenix who allowed a woman under her care to receive a life-saving abortion.

@Mistress Cynica: That cuts close to home — the county guvmint was part of my beat. But commissioner meetings were so dull, I gave up being a Good Reporter and sitting in for all of them. That, plus I also had to cover the school district. And Yamhill. And Carlton. And be ready to grab a camera if a car crash came over the police radio.

@nojo: Actually, in fairness to my Professional Pride, we had a retired stringer covering county commissioner meetings. Her stories were so padded, I was able to cut them in half without losing any detail.

Until she complained to the editor. She was being paid by the word, and I was depriving her of income.

Real-world journalism: It’s not like college!

@nojo: I once bought a raffle ticket for a goat with newspaper money out on the Jicarilla Apache reservation. We were going to buy him a bale of hay and stick it in the managing editor’s office if we won since the paper paid for it.

I hope someone (Rachel Maddow, I’m looking at you) will come out with an Atlas Shrugged primer for those who have no idea where Rand Paul is coming from. I mean, he’s practically quoting from it. I feel like some kind of context is needed for the shit that is coming out of his mouth. We’ve never had a Randian on the national political scene.

@RomeGirl: Oh, like I’m gonna read that comic doorstop twice in my life.

@nojo:

On the other hand, some printings of it are soft and absorbent…

@Benedick: If Rand Paul isn’t throwing all his energy behind ending all state involvement in everything and advocating a class of professionals get rich sucking off the tit of public program, he is a statist. Unless everything he says is meant to be received as code to his followers who hear these kinds of pronouncements as white lies to help the less committed do the right thing and place a true believer in power to do the good job of eliminating the state.

@RomeGirl: How do you spell Greenspan? His mark is on everything we read about related to the economy these days. Weirdly, for a Randian and maybe a mark of superannuated maturity on his part, he even repudiated the throw-all-regulation-to-the-wind, let-the-banks-run-wild-with-their-most-insane-fantasies approach. Still, that may be a front, one he and his fellow masters of the universe chuckle about, now that the economy has been reduced to the Randian fantasy of a handful of tyrannical monsters in each industry that enjoy pissing on their customers faces.

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