bobbyw24
05-26-2010, 04:13 AM
A healthy democratic society should be grateful for those who are extremists in the defense of liberty. Even when the extremists are wrong.
After winning Kentucky's Republican Senate primary, Rand Paul, a Tea Party favorite, swiftly became the focus of a furious racial controversy. Quotes began to circulate that made it appear that Paul advocated repealing the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In subsequent statements, Paul sought to clarify his position on the question, eventually conceding that if he had been in Congress in 1964, he would have voted for the Civil Rights Act. In an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, Paul explained: "I think that there was an overriding problem in the South that was so big that it did require federal intervention in the ’60s. There was a need for federal intervention."
As someone who lived in the South during the period leading up to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, I could not agree more with the statement that there was a need—indeed a desperate need—for federal intervention. As a young teenager, I was a fervid supporter of the civil rights struggle, a position which put me sharply at odds with many of my white Southern contemporaries. But this fact did not stop me from trying to talk even the most dyed-in-the-wool segregationist into changing his mind on the question. Sometimes I made a little progress, but often I felt that I might as well be slamming my head into a brick wall. No surprise, most of the anti–civil rights diehards were also self-confessed racists who made no effort to conceal their true motives in opposing racial integration. But not everyone who opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 fell into this disreputable category. In particular, Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater didn’t.
Goldwater was the Republican candidate for president in 1964 and opposed the Civil Rights Act. Though I supported Democrat Lyndon Johnson, I admired Goldwater as a man and I was convinced that his opposition to the Civil Right Act was genuinely based on principle, and not on racism or mere political pandering. After all, throughout his career Goldwater had amply demonstrated a consistent refusal to sacrifice his cherished principles to mere political expediency. The most famous example of Goldwater’s defiant integrity was the rousing line he included in his acceptance speech at the Republican convention of 1964: “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.” Any savvy political operator could have told Goldwater to cut this line, because it played right into the hands of his political adversaries, who were busily tarring him with the lethal label extremist—the kiss of death in American politics. But Goldwater did not cut this line, because it represented his genuine convictions. Like Henry Clay, Goldwater was that rare politician who would rather be right than be president.
But was Goldwater right? That question troubled me in 1964. It was easy to dismiss objections to the Civil Rights Act that were motivated solely by racial hatred. But it was not so easy to dismiss Goldwater’s principled line of argument, because it was derived from his ardent libertarianism. Goldwater opposed the Civil Rights Act because it required government interference in the way individual business owners managed their own businesses. He argued that the Civil Rights Act would take away the freedom of business owners to decide which customers they would serve and which customers they could refuse to serve—indeed, that was the whole point of the new federal law. This meant that even if the Civil Rights Act gave new freedom to African-Americans to eat in restaurants of their choice, which it obviously did, it was only able to obtain this worthy goal by stripping from business owners the liberty that they had traditionally enjoyed. The liberty of some was being sacrificed for the liberty of others—and the federal government enforced this sacrifice.
Continue
http://www.american.com/archive/2010/may/extremism-in-the-defense-of-rand-paul-is-no-vice
After winning Kentucky's Republican Senate primary, Rand Paul, a Tea Party favorite, swiftly became the focus of a furious racial controversy. Quotes began to circulate that made it appear that Paul advocated repealing the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In subsequent statements, Paul sought to clarify his position on the question, eventually conceding that if he had been in Congress in 1964, he would have voted for the Civil Rights Act. In an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, Paul explained: "I think that there was an overriding problem in the South that was so big that it did require federal intervention in the ’60s. There was a need for federal intervention."
As someone who lived in the South during the period leading up to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, I could not agree more with the statement that there was a need—indeed a desperate need—for federal intervention. As a young teenager, I was a fervid supporter of the civil rights struggle, a position which put me sharply at odds with many of my white Southern contemporaries. But this fact did not stop me from trying to talk even the most dyed-in-the-wool segregationist into changing his mind on the question. Sometimes I made a little progress, but often I felt that I might as well be slamming my head into a brick wall. No surprise, most of the anti–civil rights diehards were also self-confessed racists who made no effort to conceal their true motives in opposing racial integration. But not everyone who opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 fell into this disreputable category. In particular, Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater didn’t.
Goldwater was the Republican candidate for president in 1964 and opposed the Civil Rights Act. Though I supported Democrat Lyndon Johnson, I admired Goldwater as a man and I was convinced that his opposition to the Civil Right Act was genuinely based on principle, and not on racism or mere political pandering. After all, throughout his career Goldwater had amply demonstrated a consistent refusal to sacrifice his cherished principles to mere political expediency. The most famous example of Goldwater’s defiant integrity was the rousing line he included in his acceptance speech at the Republican convention of 1964: “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.” Any savvy political operator could have told Goldwater to cut this line, because it played right into the hands of his political adversaries, who were busily tarring him with the lethal label extremist—the kiss of death in American politics. But Goldwater did not cut this line, because it represented his genuine convictions. Like Henry Clay, Goldwater was that rare politician who would rather be right than be president.
But was Goldwater right? That question troubled me in 1964. It was easy to dismiss objections to the Civil Rights Act that were motivated solely by racial hatred. But it was not so easy to dismiss Goldwater’s principled line of argument, because it was derived from his ardent libertarianism. Goldwater opposed the Civil Rights Act because it required government interference in the way individual business owners managed their own businesses. He argued that the Civil Rights Act would take away the freedom of business owners to decide which customers they would serve and which customers they could refuse to serve—indeed, that was the whole point of the new federal law. This meant that even if the Civil Rights Act gave new freedom to African-Americans to eat in restaurants of their choice, which it obviously did, it was only able to obtain this worthy goal by stripping from business owners the liberty that they had traditionally enjoyed. The liberty of some was being sacrificed for the liberty of others—and the federal government enforced this sacrifice.
Continue
http://www.american.com/archive/2010/may/extremism-in-the-defense-of-rand-paul-is-no-vice