Anti-government conservatives say that government is “collectivism” and immoral. They say any government interferes with individual and business rights. Sarah Palin has said that government caused the Great Depression. Glenn Beck says that government is socialism.
Now Kentucky Tea Party Senate candidate Rand Paul says civil rights legislation is wrong because it is government interference with the right of individuals to “freely associate.” It is wrong because it is the “collective,” or community imposing their will on the individuals and businesses who choose to discriminate based on race, etc…
These libertarian ideas always make me wonder why they don’t also come out against police departments as “government meddling.” After all, laws are just more examples of the community imposing its idiotic morals on individuals. You might say robbery and murder interfere with the rights of people to live, and therefore must be punished, but isn’t that exactly the same as not letting a person do business or eat or sleep in a hotel based on skin color? They’re against those laws, so why not be consistent and be against other laws? Isn’t a law against robbery the same as regulation of business that is designed to protect consumers from being scammed? They’re against that as “government interference” in the rights of the business to scam consumers. Why aren’t they against laws against fraud?
At least Ayn Rand was consistent. She wrote that a serial killer was an “ideal man,” a superior form of human because he didn’t let society impose their morals on him, He didn’t worry about what others thought and just did as he pleased. “Other people do not exist for him, and he does not see why they should,” Rand wrote. Hickman had “no regard whatsoever for all that society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own. He has the true, innate psychology of a Superman. He can never realize and feel ‘other people.'” This is the foundation of the modern conservative thinking.
So don’t be surprised when a “Tea Party” candidate comes out and says there should be no civil rights laws, no regulation of business. Just be surprised when they don’t come out and say that it is no one’s business who murders who.
Tag Archives: civil rights
Who Are The Bloggers?
Matthew Yglesias, writing at Talking Points Memo,
One of the most neglected aspects of the blogosphere, in my opinion, is that precisely because it’s (mostly) composed of people who aren’t professional journalists, it’s composed of people who are professional doers of something else and know a great deal about what it is they “really” do. Consequently, the overall network of blogs contains a great deal of embedded knowledge. The consensus that emerges from that process can, of course, be mistaken but even though the most prominent people expressing that consensus may not be experts in the subject at hand (the most prominent bloggers tend to be generalists), the consensus will almost always be grounded in some kind of well-informed opinions.
In another post, Matthew links to a blogger from 1775, who wrote,