I don’t really care about Rand Paul’s heart of hearts, but I do wonder if the acrobatic tap dance some people do about wondering whether he’s really a racist or just advocating a return to Jim Crow that happens to have racist effects would survive if the questions were put in the following way:
Should your tax dollars be used to pay police to remove people from private businesses solely because the proprietor doesn’t like the color of their skin?
I imagine it would be like one of those push polls where you get different results based on whether you say pro-life or anti-choice or what have you. But even if it didn’t, it would belie a feature that often is overlooked; this whole debate is not one between those who would prefer a society free of state interference* versus those who think that some state interference is warranted, but a debate over what kinds of rights should have priority.
The libertarian answer in this instance is that property rights trump civil rights, and that the state should prioritize enforcing those.
*If I were a libertarian, romantic appeals to the past would bother me because it would imply that America had already implemented my vision, and decided that it was bad.
The Edge of the American West 
18 comments
May 20, 2010 at 2:42 pm
Malaclypse
I’d suspect that genuine Randian nutjobs (which I would distinguish from saner versions of libertarians) imagine themselves as Galtian supermen who don’t need the police. While this is before my time, didn’t Lester Maddox basically come to prominence as the man who “defended” his cafeteria with an ax handle?
Yes, in reality, state power upheld Jim Crow. But I’m guessing that in imaginary Galtian utopia, “producers” don’t need the help of anyone, including police.
May 20, 2010 at 2:43 pm
Vance
Your footnote seems like a version of the fallacy of revealed preference. If something changed in society, then people must have wanted it!
To your main point, while it’s amusing, I think it would run into the normal white-lie difficulties (so to speak; what’s the proper name for this? “Bradley effect” has been debunked, right?) — most people would hate to miss the opportunity to signal their own non-racism.
May 20, 2010 at 2:53 pm
dana
If something changed in society, then people must have wanted it!
I’m… not sure I’m getting your point. All I mean is that (on this hypothesis) I would find it hard to explain to someone that the libertarian paradise is both something that we would love and something that we actively legislated against when we had it. I’d prefer, were I a libertarian, to argue that we never had such a paradise, and boy-o, will it be sweet when we get there.
May 20, 2010 at 2:55 pm
kathy a.
is there any chance that rand wasn’t named after ayn?
May 20, 2010 at 3:14 pm
Vance
Put that way, dana, I’m with you. I think a convinced libertarian would have to think that the voters had been seduced into voting against their interest due to false consciousness, but you’re right, it’s an uphill rhetorical fight.
kathy, his given name is Randal.
May 20, 2010 at 4:37 pm
kid bitzer
“I don’t really care about Rand Paul’s heart of hearts”
just today for some reason i was watching jay smooth in his “how to talk about racism” video:
that guy is an amazing teacher. as somebody who has spent the last several decades trying to figure out how to teach, i just can’t believe how good he is. clear, entertaining, setting out his point early and then exploring some variations on it, making beautiful distinctions, never losing the thread.
granted, he has the advantage of being able to edit the final product from a lot of earlier takes. but if nothing else he writes a first-rate lecture, and delivers it well.
damn. he must have gone to a more highly ranked graduate program than i did. that’s the only thing that could possibly explain his being a better teacher.
May 20, 2010 at 4:51 pm
Fats Durston
Maybe you need a backing musical track, kid…
May 20, 2010 at 4:54 pm
kid bitzer
hey, i make sure that every lecture features a different pat boone song!
and still the damned students don’t listen!
May 21, 2010 at 4:58 am
Fats Durston
…and you even catered to their tastes with his take on that new-fangled “heavy metal music,” didn’t you? Ingrates.
May 21, 2010 at 6:23 am
stevek
From the little I’ve read by libertarians, they seem to me to be nothing more than inchoate Hegelians. I remember a conservative’s argument against affirmative action that basically argued that it was a return to tribal morality, prioritizing one group over others. Against this, he posited Western Enlightenment, i.e., universal, values. His point was that since the Enlightenment, the West had become more universal and open. True, there were still pockets of ethnic/racial tribalism, but these would be worked out over time because we adhered to universal ideals and the sweep of history was toward these ideals. This is, to may understanding, basically the Hegelian world-ideal taking flight and sweeping up mankind for the ride, creating the structure of history regardless of what individuals intend or practice.
It suspect libertarians, e.g., Friedman and Paul, tend to focus on the necessity of individual freedom because they assume that free markets and political equality correspond. From that assumption, it is a short step to argue that to stop political inequality, you simply need to install free markets. Because what happens then is that the free-market-ideal takes flight and sweeps up mankind for the ride, creating the structure of history regardless of what individuals now practice.
This is probably why libertarians like Rand Paul don’t consider themselves racist. Install a truly free-market economy and equality must follow regardless of Paul’s personal preferences. Paul is for a free market system therefore he cannot be racist.
May 21, 2010 at 7:13 am
politicalfootball
If libertarianism were a serious political philosophy, you’d see libertarians up-in-arms about the government-imposed cap on BP’s liability.
Instead, we get Rand Paul arguing arguing against vilifying BP, despite the enormous damage the company has done to the property rights of people who depend on the Gulf ecosystem for their living.
(I admit to making an unevidenced assumption here: It’s possible that libertarians somewhere are complaining about the liability cap, and I’d love to see a link if somebody’s got one.)
May 21, 2010 at 7:26 am
politicalfootball
Paul is for a free market system therefore he cannot be racist.
I’m sure you’re right that (some) libertarians think this way, but holy cow, can anyone look at the 100 years that separated the Civil War and the Civil Rights Act and say that free markets had succeeded in integrating lunch counters?
I remember a conservative’s argument against affirmative action that basically argued that it was a return to tribal morality, prioritizing one group over others. Against this, he posited Western Enlightenment, i.e., universal, values.
To which Ghandi’s famous response is best. Asked about Western Civilization, he said, “It would be a good idea.”
May 21, 2010 at 8:10 am
NM
Is this right? I would have thought the libertarian view would be that there’s simply no entitlement to, e.g., eat at a privately-owned restaurant. (My imagined libertarian would draw an analogy between a private business and a private home, where tax dollars via police can be used to remove people for morally bad reasons in the right circumstances.) There is, however, a justification for the use of coercion in ensuring the ability to vote, because that’s a genuine civil right.
This Coates post says a lot of interesting things about the issue.
May 21, 2010 at 9:09 am
stevek
Politicalfootball:
I agree. I think Ghandi also said something about Christianity being the best of religions were it not for Christians. But to the larger point: I’m trying to treat libertarianism as a philosophical approach. My problem is, I don’t see how it can be done; it seems to me inchoate Hegelianism.
Assuming the charitable interpretation of libertarianism as wanting what is best and accepting equality as a best, its arguments seem to me to channel a ‘best of all worlds’ version of Hegel. Since I don’t really see Hegel as doing anything other than providing a ‘happy-face’ justification of the status quo, I don’t see any validity in the argument. Also, I think you miss the point of the libertarians’ rhetoric (i.e., you’re looking at reality). It is not that free market did not succeed in integrating lunch counters, it is that the government imposed its version of equality (affirmative action) before the free-market ideal was allowed to come fully to fruition. In other words, civil rights action wasn’t needed, not because the markets already created equality, but because they were in the process of creating equality. One just had to be patient and let the free market ideal fulfill its destiny. Now, you know that’s bullshit and I know that’s bullshit, but the question is, do libertarians know that’s bullshit? I’m not so sure of that.
So I’m not sure a libertarian theorist would accept that for the libertarian ‘property rights trump civil rights’ because I think the libertarian collapses the idea of civil rights into property rights. Put another way, he collapses the idea of equality into the structure of free-market interactions. Once the latter exists, the former will follow.
If my reading of libertarian theory is correct, I don’t know whether I should be amused or horrified that Friedman has more in common with Marx than merely an interest in economics.
May 21, 2010 at 9:20 am
Vance
For more on Rand Paul’s name, see Hendrik Hertzberg. The quibbling over “namesake” is irrelevant, but the video is amusing. (One imagines that right after it was shot, Paul changed those scrubs for coat and tie pronto.)
(plus, guys: Gandhi.)
May 23, 2010 at 11:11 am
urbino
I would find it hard to explain to someone that the libertarian paradise is both something that we would love and something that we actively legislated against when we had it.
I’m with Dana.
May 23, 2010 at 11:18 am
urbino
I’ve said this many times, before, maybe even here, but still. Libertarianism as a political philosophy reminds me a lot of strict Calvinism as a theology: internally, it’s wonderfully consistent, proceeding with ruthless logic from a nicely defined set of first principles to a system of thought that reaches into almost every region of human life; the only problem is, no one has ever been able to make it work.
May 23, 2010 at 11:46 am
x
nicely defined set of first principles to a system of thought that reaches into almost every region of human life
and which principles are those? floating signifiers for civic participation and capital accumulation?