Presidential hopeful and Tea Party darling Rand Paul has long held objections to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, shamefully arguing that private businesses that serve the general public should have the right to discriminate.
The landmark civil rights legislation outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, including in private businesses that serve the general public, such as restaurants and hotels.
When asked by the Louisville Courier-Journal in 2010 if he would have voted for the civil rights acts of 1964, Paul evasively replied, “I like the Civil Rights Act in the sense that it ended discrimination in all public domains, and I’m all in favor of that.”
“But?” the interviewer asked him, in response to which Paul chuckled as if questioning substantive provisions in the Civil Rights Act were a laughing matter.
“You had to ask me the ‘but.’ I don’t like the idea of telling private business owners — I abhor racism. I think it’s a bad business decision to exclude anybody from your restaurant — but, at the same time, I do believe in private ownership.”
The Courier-Journal reported in 2010 that Paul’s critique of the Civil Rights Act echoed “the views of his father [Rep. Ron Paul], who stood up on the House floor when it celebrated the 40th anniversary of the act in 2004 and denounced it as ‘a massive violation of the rights of private property and contract, which are the bedrocks of free society.’”
Paul took a similar position that year when asked by Rachel Maddow, who has been following Paul’s attempts to deny his history of statements objecting to sections of Civil Rights Act.
Paul recently told NBC that he is not longer concerned about any of the titles in the Civil Rights Act, and that he never said that he was.
