Proud We Are of All of Them

I will say this much, though. Despite what I said yesterday, I am still amazed that libertarian political types such as the Pauls père et fils do the whole possum-in-a-halogen-high-beam routine every time the subject of civil rights comes up. If you want evidence of Rand Paul's carelessness, thoughtless, and blithe disregard for racial inequality in America, it is not to be found in his mild intellectual opposition to a piece of dubiously successful, half-century-old social legislation, but rather in the fact that he appears totally unprepared to speak fluently about race in America . . . a subject that has dogged candidates of his pedigree for years. "What, oh, um, yeah. Uh, black people? You're asking me about black people, right?"

Although I do not endorse the Paul candidacy, because he is by all indications a moron, because I don't live in his state, and because I don't vote, endorse candidates (except for Candidate-for-Death, Communist Gus Hall), or care, I am nevertheless going to offer him, totes gratis, yo, this not-even-inaccurate, pat, prepackaged, even moderately eloquent reply to the Civil Rights Act questions that will invariably arise:

I believe that in the kind of civil society I hope to create, laws like the Civil Rights Act will be unnecessary, but that that society is a long way away. Long before we get there, we must address the issues of our ruinous debt, our unjust and unnecessary foreign wars, our disastrous war on drugs, and the increasing intrusion of government into every aspect of our private lives. I believe that by applying these principles, we will create a fairer, better country for all of our citizens, regardless of race, and that in such a society, we can find a way to address our fears and prejudices about each other through respect, civic dialogue, and cooperation, rather than through the force of laws and courts.

Rinse. Repeat. Sound of crickets. Katie Couric blinks. A dog howls.

On a related note, and not that we'd ever dream of trolling for nebbish good-liberal opprobrium, I just want to point out for the Avogadro's Numberth time that while progs remain desperately convinced that the greatest threat to human life on this planet is some horrific, satanic cartel of Rush Limbaugh, some Tea-Party protester with a spelling problem, and a marginal libertarian congressional candidate from an unremarkable state, it is in fact Barack Obama who is killing thousands of innocent people, presiding over the ongoing oppression of racial minorities through the drug war, transferring billions upon billions of dollars from private citizens to speculative corporate enterprises, and so on and so forth. In other words, the pricipal nexus for violence, death, destruction, and injustice is our so-called "First African-American President," the avatar of Hope and Change, the supposedly most "progressive" of candidates, who is in reality as big a death-worshipping corporate hack as anyone. Not only that, but Obama has explicitly and repeatly explained that he is not interested in proposing or supporting programs and policies specifically targeted at the advancement of black folk. And not only that, but his public pronouncements on race, especially on absentee black fathers are not only deeply conservative, but would, if uttered by, say, Rand Paul, be roundly denounced by Obama's own progressive supporters as revanchist, atavistic, and racist. Which, in fact, they are.