Paul's comments on the Civil Rights Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act expose the flaws in his belief in a smaller government that leaves private businesses alone.
Take away the Civil Rights Act's application to private businesses, and we could see the return of segregation in public accommodations. Without the Civil Rights Act, restaurants could hang "WHITES ONLY" signs on their doors. Theaters could direct blacks and other people of color to the balcony.
...Paul can bob and weave and say "I abhor racism" until the cows come home. But his philosophy of government, applied broadly, would encourage racism, discrimination against the disabled, financial con jobs that tank the economy and practices that ruin our environment on land and sea.
The Courier-Journal adds:
This view was common back in the 1960s, and was espoused by all sorts of people who opposed the law, notably Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater, who was the GOP nominee for president in 1964. But it is a view that most Americans disagreed with then, and virtually all do today.
The ultimate result of such thinking would be the acceptability of a situation where the current President of the United States could be legally denied service at a lunch counter or a department store. This is not mainstream American thinking. This is, in a word, extremism.
...even in the most generous assessment, Dr. Paul in this case -- responding to America's struggle to replace institutionalized racism with a decent and open society -- appeared to assign "property rights" a higher value than "human rights." He also seemed to argue that it is more to be desired to limit government's reach, than to allow government, on behalf of all the people, to promote equality under the law. (Dr. Paul's repugnant view on this issue was an important factor in this newspaper's unusual decision not to make a recommendation in the GOP Senate race.)
