Rand Paul and the Freedom to be a Racist

Rand Paul, the businessman/eye surgeon/big business politician who won the Texas primary Tuesday  "abhors" racial discrimination but is not so keen on government infringing on the rights of free enterprise.  In fact, he is such an advocate of freedom that surely in a "free" society a business owner, a hate filled business owner, has the right to refuse to allow people in their establishment because of the color of their skin. This is his view of the world. He would also support the right of employers to rid themselves of workers that collectivized to win better wages and conditions no matter what color we were; he really does love freedom.

Of course, this is a handy position for Mr. Paul. he is a child of privilege from the get go.  Born in to a solid middle class family rooted in bourgeois politics and the sickness industrial complex; his dad is a surgeon also. But perhaps the most fortunate piece of luck that has been bestowed on him by his Episcopalean god is that old Rand Paul has white skin.  What a piece of good fortune.  For those familiar with US history, it was not white skinned people who were dragged out of their homes and castrated on occasion for attempting to exercise the right to vote. To my knowledge it has not been white skinned people that were denied access to diners, department stores and housing. And, surely the number of lynchings of people with white skin, and for wearing that white skin, in this country is historically low.  In my lifetime, 14 year-old polio victim Emmet Till was hogtied and thrown in a river for allegedly whistling at a white woman.  He had been beaten and one of his eyes gouged out.  To make sure the job was done, he was shot through the head and thrown into the Tallahatchie River with a 70-pound cotton gin fan tied around his neck with barbed wire. Naturally, the main suspects were acquitted. So it is very easy for Rand Paula to take this position; he has the good fortune of being the same color as the dominant ruling class in this country, from their middle class layer and  a man to boot.  Hell, color wise he is up there with the 80% majority.

Emmet Till:Before and after. Ron Paul, Rand's dad,  was discovering Friedrich Hayek and Ayn Rand not long after this happened.  What did he have to say about this back then?
Rand's father, Ron Paul received his MD degree from Duke in the sixties and was 20 at the time of Emmett Till's murder, surely such freedom loving folks as the Rands must have been heavily involved in protests against this brutality especially as they oppose the state doing anything about it.  Opposing any state intervention in to a business owner's  right to discriminate and refusal to serve a person because of their color, or religion or gender preference would mean one's individual contribution to the struggle for equality would be even greater.  He was also a surgeon in the air force and must surely have noticed the discrimination in society and the armed forces.  I lived next to a US Air Force base in Britain and even I noticed it at the age of 12.

I think I will Google around for some photos of any of the Paul family marching with Martin Luther King. I don't think so. These folks support private property rights not freedoms for all people.  They support the right to exploit, the right to own a human being and profit from them; they support racism because to fight against it weakens capital. As Malcolm X said, you can't have capitalism without racism, and for the Paul's and those like them, capitalism and the quest for profit trumps all cards.  And the whole family have done very well profiting off of people's sickness.

The views that the Rand's hold, are not only racist, they are ant-worker.  Martin Luther King correctly pointed out that race haters talk this out of one side of their mouth and the hate for Labor and all workers out of the other. Racism divides the working class and is very useful for capitalists like the Pauls who are some of the worst capitalists, they have gotten rich through people's sickness.

Michael Steele, the Republican National Committee Chairman says that he isn't "comfortable" with Rand Paul's remarks but that he spoke to Rand and he is "Four square with the Republican Party  in lockstep with moving forward on civil rights, not looking backwards.".

Well that's nice to know.  Steele says of his political friends in Washington that they may come to Capitol Hill with different philosophies but "When they get to the body, how they work to move the country forward matters." He's right about that of course, on the fundamentals they all agree, the plunder of the wealth of society is their right and theirs alone.  Their privileges come from hard work and workers are workers, we earn our means of subsistence through selling our Labor power as opposed to those who live in one way or another through the purchase of it.

Rand Paul won't let his political philosophy get in the way of that; there's too much loot to be had.