The Civil Rights Act of 1964 Vs Libertarinanism

One day after Ran Paul won the election in Kentucky's Republican primary, I had one reaction: Gee, that happened real quick. The reason that I thought that is that I am familar with Rand Paul's political philosophy of Libertarianism. He was asked if he would have voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and his answer was he would have except for the part that bans discrimination in privately owned businesses. Of course this brought on the wrath of every liberal that felt like going on a holier than thou rampage that day.

I have always had a problem with Libertarinanism and that it has one thing in common with liberalism, it sounds so good until you start seeing how it works in the real world. It is in one way the polar opposite of liberalism. Liberalism believes that people are essentially bad and must be reined in until they become perfect at some future time while Libertarinanism belives that all people are essentially good (for the most part) and must not be corrupted by the evils of government. Our own experiences show otherwise.

The reason that the Libertarian Party gets only 1 percent of the vote is because of what has happened to Rand Paul. When he and others are asked about a certain subject, they become caught up in their philosphy that the philosophy runs headlong into reality. This never looks good for the Libertarian and so he gets trashed by a news media that has no interest in understanding why Paul thinks this way. They have their own agenda and understanding the thinking process of those that are not in the Democratic Party is not a part of it.

So, what of Paul's thought process. Is it correct. Well, I would have to say not from my prospective and not from the prospect of the Constitution and more importantly, the Declaration of Independence. To understand why he is wrong you need to understand that though the Constitution may be called our founding document, it simply is not. The country was founded on July 4th 1776 with the sigining of the Declaration. The Constitution came along later in 1787. The Declaration has this quote that we all know"

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

We all know the first part, but what about the part at the end? You know the part about "institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness." The point of this part is that it is the duty of the government to set up a government that is based on the idea of allowing people to pursue their happiness. The problem with Libertarinanism is that it does not seem to take into account that their is a role for government however small but greatly important to make sure that all people can pursue happiness.

To understand this, we should remember the time in which the Civil Right Act was implimented. We all know that their were segregationist laws that we instituted by the Democratic Party. We also know that they were aimed at black. What we do talk about very much, is that they were aimed at whites equally. Any white establishment that violated this law would be penalized as well.

Think about it. If white people in the south were as racist as we are lead to believe, then why did you need a law to stop them from dealing with blacks? The answer is that they were not. Their were some and they were the ones that wrote and enforced the laws. They stopped whites and blacks from working together, not the population as a whole. I am too young to remember the Civil Rights Act being passed, but I do remember that no one ever wanted to go back to the days when we were segregated. I also know that as the south became more Republican, the more free that it became for blacks and whites alike.

Is Paul right in that the Civil Right Act should not have affected business and allowed people to discriminate if they so choose? Well allow me to make two points. Point number one, at best their would still be some places that blacks would not have be allowed and further their would have been places where whites would not be allowe. Does anyone think that it would not have worked both ways? Point number two, contrary to what some may think the founders tried to get rid of slavery. The slave states forced them to compromise and allowed the USA to form. The founders thought that they had taken care of the problem long term. That did not happen. It took a war to end slavery. Therefore we could have had an even more segregated socitey than we had during the sixties with each side becomming more and more filled with anger at each other. There was no guarantee that we would have healed our problems on our own.

The duty of the government was to fix this problem with as little government interfernce as possible. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was probably the best way to do just that.