By now millions in these United States have seen Rand Paul’s interview on The Rachel Maddow Show in which the self-professed “Tea Party” candidate for a senate seat from Kentucky performed a revisionist’s assessment of both the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990. The Right Wing in America hates legislation that tells private business owners what to do. Those of us in the disabilities advocacy community know all too well of this backlash to civil rights legislation. We recommend Mary Johnson’s book Make Them Go Away to anyone who wants to know where Rand Paul’s willful double talk about civil rights laws comes from.
My own suspicion of the Tea Party movement is that their supporters are less concerned about national deficits than with the embrace of equality and human rights that the Obama administration has tried to facilitate with health care reform. Rand Paul has opened the door for serious scrutiny of the TP’s membership. Disdain for civil rights under the guise of a “business first” mantra of local governance doesn’t sound much different than the speeches of Lester Maddox. It’s hard to imagine that Rand Paul made his way through medical school given his cavalier treatment of history. When Dr. Paul opined on The Maddow Show that the ADA unfairly forces private businesses to install elevators he was spouting nonsense. But it was an assertion that tells us more about his lack of preparation to be a legislator than anything else.
Back when Ronald Reagan was in the White House and he showed an unusual incapacity to endorse facts I said to some friends that we should demand that anyone who hopes to serve in national office should have to pass the same civil service test that postal workers must take. Rand Paul would not pass that test.
As for the rest of the GOP and the other Tea Party fabulists, it will be interesting to see what their positions are in the coming weeks both on human rights and the associated laws designed to protect equality in our country.
S.K.
Planet of the Blind 