But what are you going to do about it?

Rand Paul, Kentucky’s “Tea Party” nominee for the Senate, is opposed to the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo says why that’s not just a principled libertarian view:

To a degree the argument Paul is making is something like saying that I don’t like rape or murder, I just don’t believe in a police force to prevent it or a judiciary to punish the offenders. The reason we, albeit imperfectly, have equality before the law and in the society at large (in terms of public accommodations and so forth) on racial grounds in the whole of the United States is because of federal legislation that forced that to be the case. The reason we don’t have white and colored drinking fountains or pools for whites only

is because of federal legislation that forced that to be the case.

And we know all that because that’s how it played out during the 1950s and 60s. There was activism, there were protests and marches and freedom rides, and they got things going, but they weren’t enough. They faced overwhelming state force, and they would have lost if the federal government hadn’t – slowly and reluctantly under Eisenhower and Kennedy, with more commitment under Johnson – joined in. Libertarianism wouldn’t have worked, at least not nearly as fast.

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