David Weigel Has Stockholm Syndrome...
David Weigel defends Rand Paul:
Right Now: Defending Rand Paul, Part II: I first grappled with it in a 2008 story about racist passages in Ron Paul's newsletters.... But there's no comparison between the 2008 newsletter story and this story. That was about explicitly racist populism. This is about the libertarian dream of a colorblind society, faithful to the Constitution, with as little regulation of business as possible. I'm sticking up for Rand Paul here.... How does Paul's opposition to racism explain his position here? He's a property-rights absolutist, and he believes property rights, and the choices of consumers, are the only constitutional remedy to discrimination against race, against disability, against anything else.... He does not believe that the Constitution allows the government to force businesses, landlords, etc. to change how they do business and who they do business with. And he fears that doing so in the name of positive social change puts us on a slippery slope to extra-Constitutional measures in the service of negative social change -- taking away guns, putting people in camps. You can disagree, but that's where he's coming from....
[U]nderstanding Paul's view gets at the second reason I am fine with defending him -- it is better that we have an honest discussion about the strict constructionist view on discrimination (and, as the campaign goes on, on manifold other issues) than the hidebound, trite and dishonest conversation we have now...
"Strict constructionist." What does that mean?
William Rehnquist had a definition:
A judge who is a 'strict constructionist' in constitutional matters will generally not be favorably inclined toward claims of either criminal defendants or civil rights plaintiffs...
The non-racist libertarians of America--Brink Lindsey, David Bernstein, Richard Epstein--have long since made their peace with Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Neither Ron Paul nor Rand Paul has. There is something very wrong with both of them.
