Every gay blog out there today is acting surprised by this shit. Why? His views on discrimination don't appear to be out of step with those expressed on a daily basis by many Americans. As I mentioned in the previous Rand Paul blog, see how very few people care when presented with the situation in which a gay family is harassed by a waiter and eventually asked to leave the restaurant. (The incident was an experiment and the participants were actors but those seated around them don't know that.)

http://abcnews.go.com/WhatWouldYouDo/vid…

I love that he gave his victory speech at a members only country club. A true representative of the average Joe.

Way too anger those who agree with you while still probably undoing the damage it did. Though I think folks are far too liberal in throwing around this racist label, letting this particular genie out of the bottle is something that people tend to have long (or at least not short) memories about -- at least compared to other offenses.

(Unfortunately, this way of thinking - finding racism offensive at all - is sometimes few and far between in certain areas of Kentucky.)

He's going to be jumping thru hoops from now until he helps the Tea Baggers over a cliff in November.

Just watched the video, and to be honest I'm actually sort of impressed with the way Paul handled Maddow's questions. It's not inconsistent to say that racism is bad and at the same time the federal government shouldn't be telling private businesses who to let into their shops. Not a view I'm sympathetic with, mind you. But I think Paul probably has some vision of private correcting mechanisms to reduce the racism he finds so abhorrent, and I would've liked it if Maddow had taken him seriously enough to ask him about that, rather than trying to beat him with the imagery of lunch counters.

Libertarians have a view of the ideal that's so far away from our current state of affairs; I want to know what they think will correct harsh injustices if the federal government really does get out of the way.

Are there black libertarians?

@8 There are. There's very few libertarians, but the proportion of blacks is not that much farther below their proportion of the population at large than you'd expect. They even have a Facebook page, if that means anything. ;)

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=44…

@tiktok: Thomas Sowell describes himself as mostly libertarian, but prefers not to use ideological labels.

http://www.salon.com/books/int/1999/11/1…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Sowe…

i don't really see how 1 libertarian in the Senate is going to be worse for the country than 41 republicans. in fact, i bet he'd cross the aisle to work with the 'left' more than any other republican in that anachronistic chamber.

Josh Marshall likes your headline:

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archive…

Asshat Shrugged.

@14: After seeing the name "Rand", you just couldn't help yourself, could you? +7 Internets.

@16: With those ideals that we have in common with libertarianism comes the principle (to varying degrees) that the government doesn't have authority over its citizens. (And with that comes the portrayal of the government as a tyrannical predator on the American people.) I'm sorry, some amount of government intervention is always going to be needed.

I find Schorschi´s post very interesting and sadly ill-informed. I will try to break it down and at the same time stay respectful.

"Is it so vile to say that something is morally abhorrent, but the federal government shouldn't make it illegal if it doesn't physically harm someone?” well YES. Furthermore it is cowardly!

Discriminating against Chinese is morally abhorrent and doesn´t physically hurt anybody. Oh yeah, that´s right, except for the Chinese themselves. Let see: lynching, murders, beatings, I too find all that abhorrent and will stick my neck out to prevent them from happening; as did the civil rights activists back then. The civil rights act enacted and enforced by the federal government is a continuation of that struggle to prevent such harms from happening and provide legal remedies for when they do happen.

"Though it is right in this case of racism, governments are capricious and cruel..."
If you think governments are capricious and cruel, try explaining to me why the fashion industry made "green" the new IT color for the season and why was any color before that hot in the first place? Have you figured out already why Steve Job doesn´t want Flash on his products, because I sure have not? How about the Tobacco Industry, they sure did a fine job with their lung cancer studies in the 60´s and 70´s.

The belief that people working for a profit have your good in mind is simply naive. One must at one point begin to wonder, well why didn´t the free market took care of all those "cruel and ugly little things" before. They sure have had enough time!

And the jem: "Libertarians would help you decriminalize marijuana, allow gay marriage, end sodomy laws, and a whole long list. Or would you rather call them all racists and marginalize them?"

Well yes, I would. Because any ideology that places individual well-being before common well-being is deeply antisocial. It cannot always be about me, me, me - or my marijuana, my gay marriage, my sodomy laws. This focus on the individual is, with utmost respect, the most disturbing part about libertarianism, as seen in Rand Paul´s comments about the disabled. Missing from the discussion is community good and that´s always been the case with the whole libertarian concept. Sure, not having to serve handicap might sink my finances cost, but will that raise community standards? Not serving blacks, gays, or whatever means for a libertarian that: said person can take their money elsewhere, someplace where they´ll be served, hopefully. The problem here is with that last word: HOPEFULLY!
The, let the free market god take care of its children, crowd never propose solutions for when those wishes, however gut and well intentioned they might be, fail to materialize.

Sorry about the typos, I am a native French - German speaker, but very interested in politics in general.