Following his huge grass roots victory in the Kentucky primary,
the establishment on both sides of the phony political paradigm
have instituted a desperate and sustained smear campaign against
would be Senator Rand Paul.
Neocons
have uniformly attacked Paul as "weak on defense"
because he does not support the illegal interventionist wars
of aggression against Iraq and Afghanistan, which have cost
trillions in taxpayer dollars to finance.
And while some neocons have attacked Paul as too overtly Libertarian,
establishment
neolibs are attacking him for not being Libertarian
enough! The primary reasons being because, as a medical doctor,
he is against abortion and, secondly, he has yet to express
an opinion on gay marriage.
By far the most ridiculous, conniving and abhorrent political
attack, however, was put together by MSNBC host Rachel Maddow,
who set aside a 20 minute segment of her show to attempt to
convince her viewers that Rand Paul was in favour of racial
segregation, as if he is some kind of klan member.
The talking point stemmed from an interview earlier in the
day that Rand Paul had conducted with NPR, in addition to another
previous
interview with the Louisville Courier-Journal when
Dr Paul was asked his views on the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
In both instances, Paul stressed that he abhorred all forms
of racism and discrimination and that he broadly supported the
legislation which he sees a major development in American history.
Sticking to his Libertarian and constitutional principles, Paul
added a caveat that he felt where private businesses are concerned,
the issue becomes more of a philosophical debate regarding the
first amendment and how far the federal government should be
involved in limiting free speech.
It was this comment that Maddow pounced upon as the centre
piece of her attack.
In a blatant bait and switch tactic, Maddow proudly introduced
Paul as the man who used her show as the venue to announce his
decision to run for Senate last year. She then launched into
Paul for fifteen solid minutes, continually asking the same
question:
"Do you think that a private business has a right to
say that 'We don't serve black people?'"
"How about desegregating lunch counters?"
"Should Woolworths lunch counters have been allowed
to stay segregated? Sir, just yes or no?"
In a situation where many would have faltered and backed away,
to his credit, Rand Paul continued to explain his stance in
a calm and measured way, noting that seeking government intervention
in every instance does not jive with the Constitution.
"I'm not in favor of any discrimination of any form,"
Paul replied. "I would never belong to any club that excluded
anybody for race. We still do have private clubs in America
that can discriminate based on race.
"I think what's important in this debate is not getting
into any specific "gotcha" on this, but asking the
question 'What about freedom of speech?'" Paul continued.
"Should we limit speech from people we find abhorrent?
Should we limit racists from speaking? I don't want to be associated
with those people, but I also don't want to limit their speech
in any way in the sense that we tolerate boorish and uncivilized
behavior because that's one of the things that freedom requires
is that we allow people to be boorish and uncivilized, but that
doesn't mean we approve of it."
Paul explained that in his eyes the issue was an intellectual
debate, noting that "It's really tough to have an intellectual
debate in the political sense because what happens is it gets
dumbed down. It will get dumb down to three words and they'll
try to run on this entire issue, and it's being brought up as
a political issue."
"Does the owner of the restaurant own his restaurant?
Or does the government own his restaurant? These are important
philosophical debates but not a very practical discussion."
Paul added.
Regardless of Paul's refusal to water down his belief in the
value of the first amendment to appease MSNBC viewers, and ludicrously
acting as if she was somehow championing Paul, by intimating
she was preparing him for more debates along these lines, Maddow
continued along the same path:
"I think wanting to allow private businesses to discriminate
along the basis of race because of property rights is an extreme
view, and I think that is going to be the focus nationally on
your candidacy now." she stated while making sardonic facial
gestures as if she were in pain at just discovering that Rand
Paul was secretly a marauding white supremacist.
Paul fired back, once again putting the issue firmly into context
so that other establishment mouthpieces could not misuse portions
of his comments to push the same talking point:
"I think what you have done is bring up something that
is really not an issue. It's nothing I have ever spoken about
or have any indication that I am interested in any legislation
concerning. So what you bring up is sort of a red herring or
something you want to pit. It is a political point, it is brought
up as an attack weapon from the other side, and that's the way
it'll be used. But I think a lot of times these attacks fall
back on themselves, and I don't think it'll have any effect
because the thing is is that every fibre of my being doesn't
believe in discrimination, doesn't believe that we should have
that in our society, and to imply otherwise is just dishonest."
watch the video (a full transcript follows this article):
Following the Maddow show, MSNBC continued the attack through
Joe "I'm a conservative - honest I am" Scarborough,
who outright stated that Rand Paul believed private businesses
should operate policies of racial segregation:
While Scarborough upped the ante throughout the morning, Rand
Paul simply
reiterated his comments in an interview with conservative
talk-show host Laura Ingraham.
Like feeding mogwai after midnight in the movie Gremlins, Maddow's
hitpiece has spawned many more
gremlin blogs taking pot shots at Rand Paul throughout
the day.
We have seen these kind of attacks before on
Congressman Ron Paul, Rand's father. They are baseless
and devoid of any truth whatsoever. Plain and simple - they
do not work because the American people see straight through
them and recognise them as barrel scraping desperation on behalf
of the establishment.
This is borne out by the fact that Ron Paul's Campaign For
Liberty is stronger than ever and attracting more grass roots
support with every passing day. No matter to the establishment
media, as they continue the relentless, ridiculous and infantile
attempt to convince you that the grass roots backlash against
incumbents is all based on indentured racism.
Prior to his emphatic victory, Rand Paul’s desperate
opponent for the GOP Senate nomination in Kentucky, Trey Grayson,
ran ads that loosely questioned his sanity. The ads depicted
Dr. Paul’s face encircled by Looney Tunes-like rings,
as an announcer described "Rand’s world" as
"wild, wacky and dangerous."
Such unrefined smear tactics demonstrate how out of touch with
reality the establishment is in it's belief that the American
voting public can be swayed by political propaganda and spin.
In reality voters find such activity repulsive and intelligence
insulting.
Maddow should take a good long look at herself in light of
what she has attempted to do, which is take one of the most
upstanding, respectable and constitutionally sound politicians
you will ever find and paint him up as some kind of crazy extreme
racist.
If Maddow wants to continually take the moral high ground in
such philosophical debates, she should really think about doing
it somewhere other than MSNBC, which is 80% owned by General
Electric, owned and operated by General Dynamics, whose primary
business comes from supplying arms and weapons systems to the
US government and its international allies.
Judgements of character emanating from the belly of the global
military industrial complex, particularly on issues of human
equality and social harmony, sound resoundingly hollow.
Rand Paul does not fit into the establishment's treasured political
control framework. That is why he frightens them to death and
why the attempted character assassinations will no doubt continue
right up to the point Paul is elected into the Senate and then
beyond.
**
Full transcript of Rand Paul's interview with Rachel
Maddow
PAUL: Thank you, Rachel, and thank you for that wonderful intro
piece, quite a collection.
MADDOW: I know this must feel like frying pan and into the
fire here, so soon after the election with really being the
focus of this national storm right now. Everybody is trying
to figure out what you meant by these things. But let's talk
about it.
PAUL: Yes.
MADDOW: Was "The Courier-Journal" right? Do you believe
that private business people should be able to decide whether
they want to serve black people or gays or any other minority
group, as they said?
PAUL: Well, I think to put things in perspective, when "The
Courier-Journal" does not endorse a Republican, that's
not something very unusual in our state. They typically don't
endorse Republicans, and it's a very Democratic paper.
But with regard to racism, I don`t believe in any racism. I
don`t think we should have any government racism, any institutional
form of racism. You know, one interesting historical tidbit,
one of my favorite historical characters is William Lloyd Garrison.
And one of the interesting things about desegregation and putting
people together, do you know when it happened in Boston?
MADDOW: What do you mean, the desegregation? In general?
PAUL: You know when we got -- you know, when we got rid of
the Jim Crow laws and when we got rid of segregation and a lot
of the abhorrent practices in the South, do you know when we
got rid of it in Boston?
MADDOW: I -- why don't you tell me what you`re getting at?
PAUL: Well, it was in 1840. So I think it is sort of a stain
on the history of America that 120 years to desegregate the
South.
But William Lloyd Garrison was a champion and abolitionist
who wrote about freeing the slaves back in the 1810s, '20s and
'30s and labored in obscurity (ph) to do this. He was flagged,
put in jails. He was with Frederick Douglass being thrown off
trains.
But, you know, they desegregated transportation in Boston in
1840, and I think that was an impressive and amazing thing.
But also points out the sadness that it took us 120 years to
desegregate the South. And a lot of that was institutional racism
was absolutely wrong and something that I absolutely oppose.
MADDOW: In terms of legal remedies for persistent discrimination,
though, if there was a private business, say, in Louisville,
say, somewhere in your home state, that wanted to not serve
black patrons and wanted to not serve gay patrons, or somebody
else on the basis of their -- on the basis of a characteristic
that they decided they didn't like as a private business owner
-- would you think they had a legal right to do so, to put up
a "blacks not served here" sign?
PAUL: Well, the interesting thing is, you know, you look back
to the 1950s and 1960s at the problems we faced. There were
incredible problems. You know, the problems had to do with mostly
voting, they had to do with schools, they had to do with public
housing. And so, this is what the civil rights largely addressed,
and all things that I largely agree with.
MADDOW: But what about private businesses? I mean, I hate to
-- I don`t want to be badgering you on this, but I do want an
answer.
PAUL: I'm not -- I'm not --
MADDOW: Do you think that a private business has the right
to say we don't serve black people?
PAUL: Yes. I'm not in favor of any discrimination of any form.
I would never belong to any club that excluded anybody for race.
We still do have private clubs in America that can discriminate
based on race.
But I think what's important about this debate is not written
into any specific "gotcha" on this, but asking the
question: what about freedom of speech? Should we limit speech
from people we find abhorrent? Should we limit racists from
speaking?
I don't want to be associated with those people, but I also
don't want to limit their speech in any way in the sense that
we tolerate boorish and uncivilized behavior because that's
one of the things freedom requires is that we allow people to
be boorish and uncivilized, but that doesn't mean we approve
of it. I think the problem with this debate is by getting muddled
down into it, the implication is somehow that I would approve
of any racism or discrimination, and I don't in any form or
fashion.
MADDOW: But isn't being in favor of civil rights but against
the Civil Rights Act a little like saying you're against high
cholesterol but you're in favor of fried cheese?
PAUL: But I'm not against --
MADDOW: I mean, the Civil Rights Act was the federal government
stepping in to protect civil rights because they weren't otherwise
being protected. It wasn't a hypothetical. There were businesses
that were saying black people cannot be served here and the
federal government stepped in and said, no, you actually don't
have that choice to make. The federal government is coming in
and saying you can't make that choice as a business owner.
Which side of that debate would you put yourself on?
PAUL: In the totality of it, I'm in favor of the federal government
being involved in civil rights and that's, you know, mostly
what the Civil Rights Act was about. And that was ending institutional
racism.
MADDOW: When you --
PAUL: And I'm in favor of -- I'm opposed to any form of governmental
racism or discrimination or segregation, all of the things we
fought in the South, in fact, like I say, I think it's a stain
on our history that we went 120 years from when the North desegregated
and when those battles were fought in the North. And I like
to think that, you know, even though I was a year old at the
time, that I would have marched with Martin Luther King because
I believed in what he was doing.
MADDOW: But if you were in the --
(CROSSTALK)
PAUL: But, you know, most of the things he was fighting --
most of the things he --
MADDOW: I`m sorry to interrupt you. Go on, sir.
PAUL: Most of the things he were fighting -- most of the things
that he was fighting were laws. He was fighting Jim Crow laws.
He was fighting legalized and institutional racism. And I'd
be right there with him.
MADDOW: But maybe voting against the Civil Rights Act which
wasn't just about governmental discrimination but public accommodations,
the idea that people who provided services that were open to
the public had to do so in a nondiscriminatory fashion.
Let me ask you a specific so we don't get into the esoteric
hypotheticals here.
PAUL: Well, there's 10 -- there's 10 different -- there's 10
different titles, you know, to the Civil Rights Act, and nine
out of 10 deal with public institutions. And I'm absolutely
in favor of one deals with private institutions, and had I been
around, I would have tried to modify that.
But you know, the other thing about legislation -- and this
is why it's a little hard to say exactly where you are sometimes,
is that when you support nine out of 10 things in a good piece
of legislation, do you vote for it or against it? And I think,
sometimes, those are difficult situations.
What I was asked by "The Courier-Journal" and I stick
by it is that I do defend and believe that the government should
not be involved with institutional racism or discrimination
or segregation in schools, busing, all those things. But had
I been there, there would have been some discussion over one
of the titles of the civil rights.
And I think that's a valid point, and still a valid discussion,
because the thing is, is if we want to harbor in on private
businesses and their policies, then you have to have the discussion
about: do you want to abridge the First Amendment as well. Do
you want to say that because people say abhorrent things --
you know, we still have this. We're having all this debate over
hate speech and this and that. Can you have a newspaper and
say abhorrent things? Can you march in a parade and believe
in abhorrent things, you know?
So, I think it's an important debate but should be intellectual
one. It's really tough to have an intellectual debate in the
political sense because what happens is it gets dumbed down.
It will get dumb down to three words and they'll try to run
on this entire issue, and it's being brought up as a political
issue.
I think if you listen to me, I think you should understand
that -- I think you do, I think you're an intelligent person.
I like being on your show. But I think that what is the totality
of what I'm saying -- am I a bad person? Do I believe in awful
things? No.
I really think that discrimination and racism is a horrible
thing. And I don't want any form of it in our government, in
our public sphere.
MADDOW: The reason that this is something that I'm not letting
go even though I now realize it would make the conversation
more comfortable to move on to other things and I think this
is going to be a focus for national attention on you, I guess
until there's at least clarity on it, is that issue of the tenth,
not the nine, but the tenth out of the 10 portions -- proportions
of the -- the tenth of the Civil Rights Act that you would want
to have discussions about. As I understand it, what you`re saying,
that's the portion of the Civil Rights Act that said you can't
actually have segregated lunch counters here at your private
business.
I mean, when Bob Jones University in the year 2000 --
PAUL: Well, it's interesting. Actually, it's even --
(CROSSTALK)
MADDOW: Hold on just one second. Until the year 2000, Bob Jones
University, a private institution, had a ban on interracial
dating at their school, their private institution. If Bob Jones
University wanted to bring that back now, would you support
their right to do so?
PAUL: Well, I think it's interesting because the debate involves
more than just that, because the debate also involves a lot
of court cases with regard to the commerce clause. For example,
right now, many states and many gun organizations are saying
they have a right to carry a gun in a public restaurant because
a public restaurant is not a private restaurant. Therefore,
they have a right to carry their gun in there and that the restaurant
has no right to have rules to their restaurant.
So, you see how this could be turned on many liberal observers
who want to excoriate me on this. Then to be consistent, they'd
have to say, oh, well, yes, absolutely, you've got your right
to carry your gun anywhere because it's a public place.
So, you see, when you blur the distinction between public and
private, there are problems. When you blur the distinction between
public and private ownership, there really is a problem. A lot
of this was settled a long time ago and isn't being debated
anymore.
MADDOW: But it could be brought up at any moment. I mean, if
there - - let's say there's a town right now and the owner of
the town's swimming club says we're not going to allow black
kids at our pool, and the owner of the bowling alley in town
says, we're not actually going to allow black patrons, and the
owner of the skating rink in town says, we're not going to allow
black people to skate here.
And you may think that's abhorrent and you may think that's
bad business. But unless it's illegal, there's nothing to stop
that -- there's nothing under your world view to stop the country
from re-segregating like we were before the Civil Rights Act
of 1964 --
PAUL: Right.
MADDOW: -- which you're saying you've got some issues with.
PAUL: Well, the interesting thing is, is that there's nothing
right now to prevent a lot of re-segregating. We had a lot of
it over the last 30 or 40 years.
What I would say is that we did some very important things
in the '60s that I'm all in favor of and that was desegregating
the schools, desegregating public transportation, use public
roads and public monopolies, desegregating public water fountains.
MADDOW: How about desegregating lunch counters? Lunch counters.
Walgreen's lunch counters, were you in favor of that? Possibly?
Because the government got involved?
(CROSSTALK)
PAUL: Right. Well, what it gets into is, is that then if you
decide that restaurants are publicly owned and not privately
owned, then do you say that you should have the right to bring
your gun into a restaurant, even though the owner of the restaurant
says, well, no, we don't want to have guns in here.
The bar says we don't want to have guns in here, because people
might drink and start fighting and shoot each other. Does the
owner of the restaurant own his restaurant? Or does the government
own his restaurant?
These are important philosophical debates but not very practical
discussion. And I think we can make something out of this --
MADDOW: Well, it's pretty practical to people who were -- had
their life nearly beaten out of them trying to desegregate Walgreen's
lunch counters despite these esoteric debates about gun ownership.
This is not a hypothetical, Dr. Paul.
PAUL: Yes, but I -- yes. Well, but I think what you`re doing,
Rachel, is you're conflating the issue.
MADDOW: No.
PAUL: You're saying that somehow this abstract discussion of
private property has any bit of condoning for violence. This
-- there's nothing in what I'm saying that condones any violence
and any kind of violence like that deserves to be put -- people
like that deserve to be put in jail. So nobody's condoning any
of that.
MADDOW: Well, I understand that you're not condoning violence,
but the people who were beating for trying to desegregate Woolworth`s
lunch counters weren't asking to be beaten. They're asking --
PAUL: Those people should have gone --
(CROSSTALK)
MADDOW: -- for private businesses to be desegregated by the
government. You're saying those people should have gone to different
places? Left them segregated?
PAUL: People who commit -- people who commit violence on other
individuals should go to prison and go to jail. And there's
nothing we should ever do to condone violence on other individuals.
MADDOW: And should Woolworth lunch counter should have been
allowed to stay segregated? Sir, just yes or no.
PAUL: What I think would happen -- what I'm saying is, is that
I don't believe in any discrimination. I don't believe in any
private property should discriminate either. And I wouldn't
attend, wouldn't support, wouldn't go to.
But what you have to answer when you answer this point of view,
which is an abstract, obscure conversation from 1964 that you
want to bring up. But if you want to answer, you have to say
then that you decide the rules for all restaurants and then
you decide that you want to allow them to carry weapons into
restaurants.
MADDOW: I can -- we could have a fight about the Second Amendment.
(CROSSTALK)
MADDOW: But I think wanting to allow private industry -- private
businesses --
PAUL: It's the same fight. It's the same fight.
MADDOW: -- to discriminate along the basis of race because
of property rights is an extreme view and I think that's going
to be the focus nationally on your candidacy now and you're
going to have a lot more debates like this. So, I hope you don't
hold it against me for bringing it up. I think this is going
to be a continuing discussion for a long time, Dr. Paul.
PAUL: Well, I think what you've done is you bring up something
that really is not an issue, nothing I've ever spoken about
or have any indication that I`m interested in any legislation
concerning. So, what you bring up is sort of a red herring or
something that you want to pit. It's a political ploy. I mean,
it's brought up as an attack weapon from the other side, and
that's the way it will be used.
But, you know, I think a lot of times these attacks fall back
on themselves, and I don't think it will have any effect because
the thing is, is that every fiber of my being doesn't believe
in discrimination, doesn't believe that we should have that
in our society. And to imply otherwise is just dishonest.
MADDOW: Dr. Rand Paul, Republican nominee for the United States
Senate in Kentucky, where he'll be representing not only his
own views about how to live but what kind of laws we should
have in America, sir, I enjoy talking with these things about
you. I couldn't disagree with you more about this issue, but
I do respect you for coming on the show, and for being able
to have this civil discussion about it. Thank you.
