Sunday, May 23, 2010

Thoughts on Rand Paul

Update: Lawrence Auster says that my assumptions on Rand Paul not knowing this question was going to be asked beforehand are incorrect. I will have to check this out more, as I have been rather busy and haven't had time to check everything out as fully as I should have. More on this as I check it out.

But yes, if he knew this was going to come up he should have %%#&&*^!! well prepared for it.

Original entry:

I pretty much agree with Rand Paul's assessment that extending anbtidiscrimination laws to private business is bad. I do think that Lawrence Auster's distinction (scroll down to the fourth, and as of now, last, comment by Auster ("LA") to see him make his point) between employmenbt and service (i.e. that people could be allowed to discriminate against people in hiring them for a job, but still be legally forced to accept them as customers) has some merit, although I never thought of the issue that way before.

I think that people who criticize Paul for stepping in it are somewhat correct. Having said that, Paul's problem is not, as Unqualified Offerings' Thoreau suggests, that Paul focused on the wrong aspect of racial issues with liberty to deal with. He didn't choose this topic, it was thrust on him. On the other hand, Paul could talk more about issues where his philosophy would disproportionately help black people and emphasize that, as a way of reducing the impact of issues such as this - in fact, it would be a good idea to have done so early on as a "vaccination" against issues like this later.

I think that Lawrence Auster has a much better point, that Paul (a) should have prepared for such questions in advance, and (b) should have avoided hostile forums until he had prepared.

That is all.

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