The Right To Refuse Service To Anyone

by D. Ray Morton

So Rand Paul hasn’t been getting NEARLY as much criticism for his opinions on discrimination as he should be. Over the last few days, clips have surfaced of him aligning himself with the merits of the civil rights movement, while at the same time refusing to specifically denounce a hypotetical situation in which a private business chose not to hire someone based on race. Basically, he is all for desegregation (way to reach out on a hot button issue, Rand), but also doesn’t think the government should be able to force a business to comply with desegregation.

The question at heart is whether his fervent attitude toward keeping the national government out of making decisions for business trumps his need for desegregation to be REALLY upheld, which seems to be what he beleives. In interviews, he paints this picture where you can ideally have it both ways, where the government doesn’t pop in and tell you what you can and cant do AND businesses don't do anything dodgy to begin with. The PROBLEM though is that he’ll only denounce racism on a personal level, and considers it a “first ammendment right” if a business decides not to hire someone based on race. So HE isn’t condoning racism of any kind himself, but he wont take the steps it’s clear we need in this country to make sure no one else condones racism of any kind.

Conservatives love to call liberals idealists who dont really hone in on the real issues in this country, but they they themselves have a penchant for defending a false idealized America, one in which we are never wrong, racism shouldn’t be an issue, and any criticism is “unAmerican”. Sure, companies shouldn’t be racist. But they are in many cases, and we can’t build an arguement based on “shouldn’t”. Shouldn’t there be a government in place to enforce right and wrong? Is it really so terrible a thing to have the government there to make sure we’re all batting for the same team?

I’ve said it before- Conservatives think everything is a slippery slope. If Rand Paul’s need for the government to leave the state’s alone is so great that it allows for racist practices, that means he worries about the hypothetical takeover of big brother more than he worries about actual problems facing this country right now. “Sure, right now it’s oversight on racist hiring practices, but before you know it they’ll be putting tracker chips in our brain and giving us all the food they’ve decided we can eat in pill form and force feeding us those pills in giant stainless steel troughs!” Why don’t conservatives trust that the American people would CATCH a jump like that? We have elections, and we’d never ever let the government get to a point where our freedoms were really hindered to that extreme. The government controls things when it’s clear the states cant, or when there is a moral imperative.

Racism is not expression. It’s not speech. And racism is a problem in this country because people like Rand Paul find it to be the lesser of two evils, the other being this unfounded worry about government control. Is ANYONE really that opposed to the government telling a business not to be racist? Anyone? Free speech allows the Ku Klux Klan to walk down the street, but it doesn’t protect a business to deny someone based on ract. It just doesn’t. It’s easy for Rand Paul to be for civil rights as an ideal 40 years after it passed. It should be just as easy for him to be for the rights ingrained in the act as specific instances.