Randy Paully

There's people in the blogosphere trying to paint Rand Paul as a racist because of his somewhat incoherent admission that he's against the Civil Rights Act. While you can look askance and wonder if, like Trent Lott a while back, this is a somewhat thinly-veiled attempt to use "libertarianism" as a means of "keeping whitey on top," I doubt that's really the case. And like Lott, I doubt Rand Paul spends much of his day balling up his fists at the sky cursing "those damn blacks!"

But he does find himself in the newly uncomfortable position of having to twist himself in knots while tap-dancing for an extremely loud group of people who demand "total" freedom, without compromise. Things like that are fun to shout out at rallies while waving around Obama-cum-Hitler placards, but, as Sully points out HERE, these people live in an adolescent world that is without context or history. Yes, we all love our freedom, but the fact that we're all sharing the same slab of the planet means that with this freedom comes opportunity costs. Yeah, I can imagine sympathizing with an employer having to follow government rules about who he can/can't hire. But I also like that the government somewhat frowns upon someone guzzling a bottle of vodka and then blowing down the highway at 100mph. Sure it's annoying that we hafta take off our shoes at the airport (so I'm told), but I think we're all pretty happy that the government makes sure there's no giraffe doo-doo in our cheeseburgers. And on and on and on. Everybody has their own opinions on what laws they like or don't like, but indirectly claiming you'd be okay with redlining being hip again seems like an over-reach.

But people like Paul having to confusedly unravel legislation in such a way that it pleases these people that demand "total freedom!" is an act that in the end is gonna basically be a waste of time for everybody, including yours for reading this post.

Hey, to make it up to ya, check this out.