Ph.D. Octopus

by Nemo

Over at the excellent U.S. Intellectual History Blog, Andrew Hartman has written a provocative post on the relationship between neo-liberalism and the “spirit of the 1960s.” Citing a number of recent theorists including Wendy Brown, Slavoj Žižek, and Walter Benn Michaels, Hartman argues that activists in the 1960s, with their demands for “public tolerance of things that were once intolerable, such as racial and sexual difference,” helped pave the way for “unfettered capitalism with a smiley face.”

The Spirit of the Sixties?

Through the cunning of history, Hartman argues, capital has learned to thrive off of movements that “many thought was formed as resistance to capitalism, or at least, as resistance to the symptoms of capitalism: imperialism, racism, sexism, etc.” From this perspective, it appears that one of the most significant–but historically neglected–legacies of the 1960s was the way it provided establishment institutions multicultural ploys to feign progressivism while reproducing inequality.

While I think there’s something to be said for this view, especially the way that corporations and universities undertook the bare minimum of action to address the many grievances launched against them, it also risks downplaying the period’s genuine radicalism.  As historian Jeremy Varon has observed, by the late 1960s activists tended to understand inequality as a total “system” perpetuated by the nation’s leading institutions: universities, corporations, and government each played a role in protecting the interests of patriarchy, racism, empire, and global capital.

Or is this the spirit of the Sixties? Or just an awesome hair day?

In this era, groups such as the Black Panthers, the New York Radical Women, and even Students for a Democratic Society (and its various offshoots) demanded much more than diversity programs and corporate restructuring. This explains why the United States government saw the period’s activists, particularly the Panthers, as a major threat, and did everything in its power to destroy them (often breaking the law in the process).

On his larger point, I think Hartman’s correct to highlight capitalism’s newfound love affair with a United Colors of Benetton style of “multiculturalism” in the post-1960s period. These corporate reforms came on the cheap and did nothing to address the intertwined tyrannies highlighted by the late New Left: economic inequity, male privilege, black ghettoization, and American militarism. Today, corporations and universities–key institutional reproducers of social inequality–make use of the language of diversity to present themselves as the protectors of egalitarianism and social mobility. The fact that they get away with doing so—I think—says much more about the power of the American establishment than it does with the goals of 1960s radicals like Martin Luther King Jr., Tom Hayden, or Shulamith Firestone.

Bobby Seale and Huey Newton: Harbingers of Neo-Liberalism?

While American institutions might have found ways to co-opt much of the period’s dissent, this should not detract from the real gains that the era’s activists have won, even when up against some of the most well-entrenched and well-funded opponents imaginable. In the face of massive hostility, sixties radicals played a major role in electing the first generation of black political officials since Reconstruction, transformed rape and abortion laws to give women more control over their own bodies, witnessed the rise of the gay liberation movement, and helped launch modern environmentalism. While never as successful as their conservative critics claimed, the era’s radicals also transformed the teaching of American history–making the stories of the poor, of people of color, and of women, for example, central to the discipline’s mission. If the period’s activists failed to stem the rising tide of economic inequality in this country, I think that says a lot less about them than it does with the power of their opponents.

Which brings me to the Tea Party.  Hartman concludes his post by asking whether he is “crazy” for sympathizing with Benn Michaels’ view that the Tea Party represents America’s only significant resistance to neo-liberalism (even if its members don’t realize it) because of its opposition to illegal immigration. Our own Wiz has already addressed many of Benn Michaels’ principal  arguments here.

As for me, I don’t think that Hartman’s crazy, but I do think that describing a movement largely composed of affluent and well-educated white people, who attack undocumented workers (one of neo-liberalism’s chief victims) and call for the elimination of an already pitiable welfare state somehow “anti-capitalist” wishful thinking at best. (Whether or not the Tea Party has some legitimate grievances is another point entirely.)

Resistance to neo-liberalism in action.

What does all this all mean for today? As Wiz noted in his critique of Benn Michaels,“one of the main effects of neoliberalism has been to create a global working class that is increasingly female and people of color. So any movement which seeks to empower this new working class has to take issues of gender, race, and sex seriously.” Creating alliances among opponents of neo-liberalism, while recognizing difference, it seems to me, remains crucial to any movement that aims to achieve social justice. This, perhaps, requires honoring the best of what the “spirit of the 1960s”–at least its radical side–has to offer.

Wiz

I’m sure you’ve all seen the video of Joe Miller– Alaskan senate candidate/post-apocoplytic survivalist– and his private guards detaining a journalist at a public event. Glenn Greenwald points out that these guards were active duty military, which certainly adds a extra dash of creepy authoritarianism to the whole thing.

A couple of days ago I caught a bit of the California governors debate, and Meg Whitman was saying something about how terrible and greedy the public employees unions were, and how she was going to slash their pay. Except– she made a point of saying– not for uniformed employees who care a gun. Which I assume would be cops and prison guards. Slash away at the nurses or teachers who, you know, make peoples’ lives better. But never say a bad word about someone with a gun.

The connecting link, of course, is the strange definition of freedom our friends on the right have adopted. Who knew that our shining city of the hill of freedom and individual liberty included so many cops and soldiers telling you what to do?

But then, is this not a defining feature of neoliberalism? The move to slash public investment in social goods necessarily goes hand in hand with the increased investment in the security and military apparatus of the government.

This probably deserves more thought, but it brings to mind one of my favorite quotes from David Montgomery’s Citizen Worker. In the nineteenth century, even as social darwinist ideology proclaimed that government could not care for the sick or poor, “the coercive capacity of the government grew steadily throughout the century.” Meanwhile, “the authority it exercised was narrowed in scope.” (Montgomery 117).

by Wiz

No, that’s absurd. But Walter Benn Michaels thinks so.

I recently came upon this interview with Michaels, in which he calls the Tea Party “a real reaction against neoliberalism that is not simply a reaction against neoliberalism from the old racist Right.” You see, neoliberalism requires immigration, Michaels believes, and the Tea Party is opposed to immigration. Thus, the Tea Party is anti-neoliberalism. This is… so fucking crazy I almost didn’t know what to say.

Michaels, for the last couple of years, has been the preeminent critic of multiculturalism from the left. In The Trouble with Diversity, he argued that the type of multiculturalism, cosmopolitanism, and identity politics that have dominated the liberal imagination in general, and the university system in particular, are the products of an unconscious affiliation with neoliberal ideology. He identifies what he calls a “left neoliberalism” comprised of anti-racists, anti-sexists, and others, who, he thinks, enshrine an individualistic mentality of personal fulfillment which is perfectly consistent with consumerist neoliberalism. A central aspect of the post-Fordist economy, Michaels argued, was a shift whereby the economy became depoliticized, and instead cultural issues (gender, sex, race, etc…) took its place. Universities, for instance, began obsessing over having a culturally diverse student body and curriculum, while ignoring the lack of poor students and embracing a neoclassical economic orthodoxy.

Michaels certainly isn’t the only one to make arguments like this. Lizabeth Cohen, in her excellent study, A Consumers’ Republic, argues that much of the identity politics we associate with the 60s era was predated by the move to niche marketing in the 40s and 50s. David Harvey has also made similar arguments about “post-modern” identity movements which are reflective of a neoliberal “mental conception of the world.” In terms of academia, William Sewell argued, in his wonderful essay “ The Political Unconscious of Social and Cultural History” that the “cultural turn” made by historians in the 70s and 80s was consistent with the end of Fordism and rise of the post-modern economy of branding, information, and advertisement.

I’m can be a bit sympathetic to these arguments. There is certainly a type of bloodless cosmopolitanism found among our ruling class, with their Thomas Freidman and their subscriptions to The Economist, that seems to justify such a reading. Your average international businessman really does need to be culturally aware, tolerant to other people and religions, and accepting of different races and sexual orientations if he is going to properly exploit them. Goldman Sachs cares about extracting surplus value from you, not what you do in the bedroom or whether you have tattoos. Even more, there is, as Thomas Frank has argued, a sort of neoliberal self—individualist, in a constant state of cultural rebellion, dividing into ever-smaller niches of solidarity—which goes hand in hand with both identity politics and, even more, with late-capitalist consumerism.

But only to a point. As a critique of pseudo-radical university culture I think Michaels argument is uncomfortably accurate. But as a critique of the Left writ large it has some pretty big holes in it. First of all, it ignores the fact that one of the main effects of neoliberalism has been to create a global working class that is increasingly female and people of color. So any movement which seeks to empower this new working class has to take issues of gender, race, and sex seriously.

More to the point it misses the actual coalitions that exist in the real world. Yesterday I was at the One Nation march, made up of all the progressive groups: Unions, civil rights groups, gay rights groups, etc… According to Michaels’ logic such a coalition should be unthinkable. Why would the major labor unions ally themselves with the forces of neoliberalism? But in fact, such a coalition comes naturally to anyone who has ever spent a minute doing progressive politics. Every labor union I’ve ever worked for makes a serious effort to recruit organizers who are women, people of color, and from other marginalized group. Why? Both because they believe in it, but also because these are the very people they are trying to organize.

The biggest hole in Michaels argument, then, is that while his theory has an inward logic it simply does not describe the actual recent history of the Left. He cannot explain why the dreaded identity activists have always had such a clear elective affinity to the economic left. Why did the organized gay rights movement come out of the Communist Party? Why did the CP and socialist party agitate on Civil Rights long before the Democratic Party did? In 1963, A Philip Randolph, the black labor leader, said the following: “Look for the enemies of Medicare, for high minimum wages, of social security, of federal aid to education, and there you will find the enemy of the Negro.” Can anyone say the same is not still true?

Which brings us to immigration, where this whole thing started. Michaels is obsessed with how liberal immigration policy is neoliberal. In one of the more ridiculous sections of this interview Michaels calls the Tea Party the only anti-neoliberal political force out there, because of its anti-immigrant fervor. “The truth is, it’s hard to find any political movement that’s really against neoliberalism today, the closest I can come is the Tea Party.” The reason: the Tea Party is against illegal immigration and “Because who’s for illegal immigration? As far as I know only one set of people is for illegal immigration, I mean you may be [as a Marxist], but as far as I know the only people who are openly for illegal immigration are neoliberal economists.” In other words, Illegal Immigration=neoliberalism; Tea Party= Anti-Illegal Immigration; therefore Tea Party= Anti-neoliberal”

This is wrong on so many levels. First of all, Michaels is flat out wrong that no one on the left supports illegal immigrants. The whole “no one is illegal” campaign is about political support for illegal immigrants. Second, he is wrong that “illegal immigration is the kind of ne plus ultra of the labor mobility that neoliberalism requires.” Neoliberalism requires mobility of capital, but benefits tremendously from the fact that labor does not have the same freedom. Throughout the world—from Dubai to Europe to Arizona—capital is thrilled that there are workers who cannot legally become citizens of the state where they work. The result is a working class that is exposed to a level of surveillance, police harassment, and political repression unlike anything since the nineteenth century.

Which is exactly why the economic left in this country supports immigrant rights movements. We can’t have a strong and politically powerful working class as long as much of it is deemed to be “illegal,” stripped of the rights of citizenship and threatened with deportation if they speak up or try to form a union. Since at least the 1990s, the major labor unions have been vocal advocates for a more humane immigration policy, and Hispanic organizations were prominent members of the One Nation march, side by side with the AFL-CIO.

Finally, Michaels says that “I don’t know of anyone who’s advocating ‘close the borders.’” Umm… He really isn’t paying much attention to the right wing is he?

Michaels whole argument, it seems to me, is based on a set of absurd reductive logic. There are forms of anti-racism that are useful to corporations! Therefore anti-racism is always pro-corporate! Neoliberalism doesn’t like national borders! Therefore all forms of support for immigration is neoliberal! Etc…

If there are people who are sincerely anti-racist (not just the absurd “color-blindness” of the modern right), sincerely pro-gay rights, sincerely pro-women, pro-immigrant, etc… but are also neoliberal in their economics, it seems to me we have a cause for half a celebration. We won one argument! Now we have to fight on the economic front, push them further towards an economically egalitarian vision, not throw away the commitment to these other forms of equality.

by Weiner

A great piece by history doctoral student Gabriel Winant on Glenn Beck’s sullying of the legacy of the African American Civil Rights Movement. Winant highlights the role of communists, socialists and social democrats, and labor activists in advancing the cause of Civil Rights, from before and including Martin Luther King Jr. He shows how Beck gets his history wrong–and right–in interesting ways. Here’s a great paragraph:

Laugh away at Glenn Beck’s paranoia, but — presumably unbeknownst to him — he’s actually got a point. The fact is that the basic norms of equality that we now think of as natural are indeed the result of radical agitation. Whatever her own politics are, Shirley Sherrod really was working in a tradition that goes back to people and groups whose beliefs Beck would find truly heinous. The grandparents of civil rights were folks who would never get through the vetting process for a job in the Obama administration today. They were much more like Van Jones than like his tormentor, Glenn Beck.

Read the whole thing.

by Wiz

In honor of Glenn Beck’s whitepeoplapoloza (even the AP described a “a vast, predominantly white crowd):

by Wiz

According to the New York Post, there was a “Holy War” yesterday in the Financial District over the misnamed “Ground Zero Mosque.” I actually was there, and have some thoughts about the dueling protests, which have been receiving coverage all over the country, and spawned a video that has already gone viral.

First of all, the protests (both of them) were insanely small. We’re talking about 250 on our side (the non-bigot side) and maybe 500 on the other (the pro-bigot). That’s about roughly 0.0000131% and 0.0000263%, respectively, of the New York metropolitan area. So the narrative that this issue is enflaming New Yorkers is a bit exaggerated.

Second, while the bigots did outnumber us, I’d say the turnout was surprisingly big for the pro-tolerance group. Given that opposition to the community center is being driven by the entire institutional might of the conservative movement (talk radio, Fox News, the Republican Party, etc…), while, as far as I could tell, it was only the sectarian Left who mobilized anyone to come out and defend religious freedom, I’d say our numbers were decent. I’m not always a fan of the various splinter left groups (Judean People’s Front, Popular Front of Judea, etc…) but, to their credit, they were far better represented there than, oh, the Democratic Party. Once again, the non-liberal Left are better liberals than actual liberals.

Third, next time you hear some conservative complain about Muslims burning American Flags in the Mideast take a good look at this picture I took. Guess what happens when Muslims are proud to be American? When they embrace American flags? Well they get screamed at and insulted and told they’re terrorists by conservatives in Revolutionary war uniforms. As Jello Biafra might say, “tell me, who’s the real Patriot?”

I didn’t see that much violence, though there were some old bigots trying to start a fight with the hippies. And occasionally this fat white guy walked past us and screamed “racist” at our crowd. Given that his side was whiter than a Jimmy Buffett concert, I’m not sure what exactly he meant (actually, I do know what he meant: “white people are the real victims here.” As they always are…)

Glenn Greenwald had a good article today about this whole controversy, arguing that it is not a “distraction,” as some wish to call it. He writes, “The Park51 conflict is driven by, and reflective of, a pervasive animosity toward a religious minority — one that has serious implications for how we conduct ourselves both domestically and internationally.”

I think Glenn is right here. This controversy may be manufactured, more spectacle than reality. And it absolutely is. But imagery matters and now that its been manufactured, and the angry racists are on the loose, decent people have the responsibility to stand up to them. “Have you no sense of decency?” “No Pasaran”. That sort of stuff.

Anyways… it got me thinking about the excellent piece Luce had (before she joined us here) on the thorny question of multiculturalism and the Left. Luce criticizes the flatness of the common complaint that multiculturalist politics have gone too far and that we should return to the solid ground of economic justice. There is a group of (largely) white male lefties, some of whom I deeply respect (like David Harvey or Thomas Frank) who act as if the only true domain for the left to fight on is economics, everything else is a distraction. Luce pretty much said everything I had to say on the topic.

But I wanted to expand on something Luce wrote when she criticized those who act “as if these very categories of race, sexuality, and gender hadn’t been manufactured at some (sometimes not so distant) point by that majority itself.”

Situations like this Park 51 controversy, I think, illustrate this point perfectly. It’s not as if the Left is the one out there politicizing categories of race, gender, ethnicity, or religion. Perhaps it was different in the 60s, but today it is the reactionary Right who are increasingly choosing to fight its battles on those grounds. I think its fair to say that, after recent history, many of us on the Left would be more than happy to focus on defeating the banks, getting better health care, more equitable access to education, etc… But if the Right is going to go around mobilizing people with naked appeals to racial and religious resentment– with more than a dash of misogyny and homophobia thrown in– than its our responsibility to defend those groups, even if it means a politics of “special interests.” This is both because it is the right thing to do and because we’re well aware that once you start accepting that Talk Radio has a veto over one minority’s freedom of religion, things don’t end well for the rest of us. Like, for instance, people start going around calling Mike Bloomberg and Scott Stringer “Judenrats” or harassing black guys just because they happen to work near your protest.

by Weiner

More than many liberals and progressives, and more than most of my co-bloggers, I think, I enjoy reading conservatives. Not only because I want to “know my enemy,” but also because few of my beliefs are firmly in place, because I change my mind on many issues time and time again, and because I feel like I have something to learn, even from the die-hards of the Right.

And so I read Charles Krauthammer‘s column in The Washington Post every week. Like me, Krauthammer is a Montreal Jew. I disagree with him on most everything, but I value his clarity of writing and thought, his consistency (which has unfortunately come to border on predictability) and his realism, even if it’s a realism that I don’t think is very hinged to reality.

In his most recent column, however, Krauthammer inadvertently advanced a point of his opponents. In arguing the Islamic fundamentalism is the chief cause of terrorism, Krauthammer wrote of Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter:

Remember the wave of speculation about Hasan’s supposed secondary post-traumatic stress disorder — that he was so deeply affected by the heart-rending stories of his war-traumatized patients that he became radicalized? On the contrary. He was moved not by their suffering but by the suffering they (and the rest of the U.S. military) inflicted on Hasan’s fellow Muslims, in whose name he gunned down 12 American soldiers while shouting “Allahu Akbar.”

Krauthammer concludes that the chief cause here is Islamic fundamentalism. But what about the “suffering” that the US military has inflicted upon Muslims from Iraq to Afghanistan and beyond? Islamic fundamentalism, like all religious fundamentalism, should not be ignored, but neither should US actions that inspire violent reactions.

by Wiz

I’ve become slightly obsessed with the way that the modern right wing (mis)uses a certain historical memory in their rhetoric and imagery. You know, as Tina Fey said, those guys dressed like Paul Revere who are so fat they picket from lawn chairs. The latest is this ad from a real Congressional candidate (not, I repeat, not a parody) in which he is discussing taxes with George Washington, Sam Adams, and Benjamin Franklin. At the end, George Washington advises the candidate to “gather your armies.” Kind of awesome, in its own way.

But it all got me thinking. The modern right loves them their Big-Daddy presidential heroes- your Jeffersons, Washingtons, etc… But think about who is almost always missing from their iconography? Lincoln. Where the hell is Lincoln in all this? Why isn’t he advising Rick Barber? After all, Lincoln was actually a Republican.

I don’t know why I ask, since there answer is too obvious. Even were you to put aside the thorny question of the Right’s relationship with race and slavery, Lincoln and the early Republicans still pose a massive ideological problem for the right.

Lincoln, you see, believed in “centralized government and the pursuit of empire,” as the Conservative Political Action Committee tells us. I’m not sure where empire comes from, but the “centralized government” critique of Lincoln is Lost Cause narrative stuff in its perfect form (the South didn’t rebel to protect slavery, but because of high-minded interest in Constitutional federalism.)

Anyways… this is all an excuse for me to link to my favorite right-wing scholar: Thomas DiLorenzo. DiLorenzo is a, what else, economics professor who has made a name out of “correcting the record” on Abraham Lincoln, in no less than three separate Lincoln hating books. Lincoln was insufficiently free market (Tariffs, Homestead Act, etc…), too enamored of the Federal Government, and instituted income taxes and soft money policies to pay for the Civil War (rather than pay for war with pixie dust and wishes, as the Republican Party now prefers). DiLorenzo is instead a fan of the “limited government” political philosophy of John Calhoun. In fact Clyde Wilson, professor at University of South Carolina and editor of the John Calhoun papers lauds DiLorenzo as “the very heart and core of American history.”

Anyways… the full story here is too long, but can be summed up: A conservative strand of Jeffersonian/Jacksonian political philosophy was very appealing to Southern slaveholders for a variety of reasons — power stayed at the local rather than federal level, agrarianism, anti-modernism, anti-immigration (since immigrants couldn’t be trusted on the slavery question) etc… — and this lasted well after the Civil War as white elites chaffed under Reconstruction and Northern economic dominance. Equality, a fundamental Jeffersonian principle, was made possible for whites, even encouraged, by the domination of slaves and then free blacks in the Jim Crow era. Limited government and low taxes became the call of the Redeemers who both re-segregated the South (often after so-called “Tax-Payer Conventions”) to end Reconstruction and enacted fiscal retrenchment, retreating from the pro-poor activist state governments that African-Americans and poor whites had put into place during Reconstruction. Variants of this philosophy survive to the day, prospering– who would have thought– after a black President from Illinois is elected president.

This isn’t to say that the modern Right is motivated by a nostalgia for slavery. But their intellectual tradition sure has some ugly roots. But if John- slavery is “the most safe and stable basis for free institutions in the world”- Calhoun isn’t a motherfucker, no one is.

By Wiz

I know I should leave this alone, but god-damn Rand Paul is at it again, comparing himself to abolitionists and Civil Rights leaders. In an op-ed with a Kentucky newspaper he writes:

I am unlike many folks who run for office. I am an idealist. When I read history I side with abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglas who fought for 30 years to end slavery and to integrate public transportation in the free North in the 1840s. I see our failure to end slavery for decade after decade as a failure of weak-kneed politicians. I cheer the abolitionist Lysander Spooner, who argued that slavery was unconstitutional 20 years before the Civil War. I cheer Lerone Bennet when he argues that the right of habeas corpus guaranteed in the Constitution should have derailed slavery long before the Civil War.

Point one: This it nit-picky, but Lysander Spooner and William Lloyd Garrison took the exact opposite position on the constitutionality of slavery. Spooner thought slavery was unconstitutional, Garrison was almost certainly correct in thinking that slavery was constitutional, and that was why the constitution was “the most bloody and heaven-daring arrangement ever made by men.” I’ve already written about why its nonsense to think abolitionists were modern libertarians. Garrison did not support Rand’s beloved Constitution.

Second, Lysander Spooner? Who the fuck is this Lysander Spooner you’re asking? Spooner was a bit-player in abolitionist circles. But he has taken on a second life as a hero for the modern libertarian right. They’ve made him a hero, partly on the basis of his failed attempt to compete with the US Postal service, and his opposition to slavery. Apparently the hilariously named Laissez Faire Books used to give out a Lysander Spooner award. Even Justice Scalia has gotten in the act, citing Spooner in defense of gun rights.

Spooner makes, let’s say, a bit of an awkward hero for the libertarian right. Among other things he was opposed to wage labor, which he believed in proto-marxist fashion stripped men of the fruits of their labor, a proponent of soft-money inflationary policies (not like our modern Gold-bugs), an anti-imperalist, and a supporter of the labor movement. In many ways he’s more of an anarchist of sorts, then a libertarian properly understood.

A bunch of those libertarians from the U.A.W. and I.U.E. marching with Martin Luther King

Its just one more case of right-wingers trying to adopt the mantle of people who would have detested what they stood for. The violence to history done by people like Paul is tremendous. The worst, absolute worst example of this, is Glenn Beck, who is going to give a speech on the Lincoln Memorial on the anniversary of King’s I have a Dream Speech. Rand Paul as well claims to act in King’s legacy, which is, of course, far more outrageous and offensive than their grave-robbing of Spooner. Neither Beck nor Paul, it seems, can get beyond a few out of context quotes from King about color-blindedness. As if the man who died supporting a strike of public workers, who spoke out against the Vietnam war, and who was leading a poor people’s march demanding the government to ensure high paying jobs was a right-wing libertarian.

There is a tremendous erasure of history required for the modern right to claim historical heroes among the abolitionists and Civil Rights movement. Later in the op-ed Rand Paul claims to believe deeply in Martin Luther King Jr’s vision. Let’s take that seriously for a second. Its not like King has been dead for 500 years. People and institutions who, you know, were his actual allies and friends in the Civil Rights Movement are still alive. Not that Jesse Jackson, or John Lewis, or the UAW or whoever gets to speak for King, but they have a better claim on it than Rand Paul does. They actually marched with him in real life, not in their fantasies, like Paul did. The point is, Paul apparently believes that he knows better than the actual Civil Rights activists what the legacy of the Civil Rights movement was.

In other words: a shocking display of white arrogance, entitlement, and willful ignorance.

By Wiz

A couple of days ago Rand Paul had his balls surgically removed by Rachel Maddow on her show, concerning the issue of whether or not private businesses have the right to discriminate. Watch it below, if you haven’t at one of the ten million places that already linked to it.

Particularly obnoxious, to me at least, was when Paul mangled the history of abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison. Here is the relevant part:

PAUL: You know, one interesting historical tidbit, one of my favorite historical characters is William Lloyd Garrison. And one of the interesting things about desegregation and putting people together, do you know when it happened in Boston?
MADDOW: What do you mean, the desegregation? In general?
PAUL: You know when we got — you know, when we got rid of the Jim Crow laws and when we got rid of segregation and a lot of the abhorrent practices in the South, do you know when we got rid of it in Boston?
MADDOW: I — why don’t you tell me what you`re getting at?
PAUL: Well, it was in 1840. So I think it is sort of a stain on the history of America that 120 years to desegregate the South.
But William Lloyd Garrison was a champion and abolitionist who wrote about freeing the slaves back in the 1810s, ’20s and ’30s and labored in obscurity (ph) to do this. He was flagged, put in jails. He was with Frederick Douglass being thrown off trains.
But, you know, they desegregated transportation in Boston in 1840, and I think that was an impressive and amazing thing. But also points out the sadness that it took us 120 years to desegregate the South. And a lot of that was institutional racism was absolutely wrong and something that I absolutely oppose.

Paul’s history is, well let’s say, a bit shaky here. His point, I guess, is that segregation ended in Boston because Garrison changed public opinion, rather than through government action. This is not accurate for reasons that are very relevant for the debate about libertarianism.

First of all, the low hanging fruit: This is picky, perhaps, but William Lloyd Garrison started abolitionist agitation in 1831, 1829 if you count his speech at Park Street Church, but most historians would say 1831, when he founded The Liberator. So, Paul fails on the dates when he claims Garrison started in 1810s.

Second, segregation did not end in 1840s in Boston. Perhaps Paul means the segregation of the railroads, which the abolitionists did largely achieve in the 1840s in Massachusetts. But the Public School system was not desegregated until 1855, Harvard did not graduate an African-American until 1870, and many churches, theaters, lecture-halls, and other public institutions remained segregated throughout the period. The leading scholars on Black Boston write: “In antebellum Boston, blacks were segregated into a few highly concentrated areas of the city, restricted to Jim Crow accommodations on public transportation, isolated in schools that were rapidly deteriorating, and scholastically inferior, excluded from juries, and seated apart in white churches, lecture halls, and places of entertainment.” (Horton and Horton 73)

Here, for instance, is a quote from The Liberator, Dec 12, 1853: “Rev. Theodore Parker administered, in a recent Sunday discourse, a well-deserved rebuke of the spirit of caste, which in the Puritan city is exhibited towards that portion of God’s heritage whose skins are colored unlike the majority; and for an illustration, referred to the concerts of Monsier Julian, at Music Hall, from one of which respectable colored persons had been excluded.”

Charlotte Forten, a black feminist, keep a meticulous journal throughout the 1850s and 1860s. A relevant entry from September 1854:

“I have suffered much today,- my friends, Mrs. P and her daughters were refused admission to the Museum, after having tickets given them, solely on account of their complexion. Insulting language was used to them.—Of course they felt and exhibited deep, bitter indignation; but of what avail was it? None, but to exit the ridicule of those contemptible creatures, miserable doughfaces who do not deserve the name of men. I will not attempt to write more.—No words can express my feelings, but these cruel wrongs cannot be much longer endured. A day of retribution must comes. God grant that it will come very soon! (Forten 98)

The point, of course, is that moral suasion and consumer choices—Rand Paul’s solution to segregation—did not work. Let me repeat. Non-state consumer action did not desegregate all public facilities in Massachusetts. Abolitionist pressure did convince some theaters, a number of railroads, and other companies to let in African-Americans. But, by any standard, segregation, but de facto and de jure, remained a fact in Boston.

Which is why—you guessed it—abolitionists and their allies turned to the government. First the State Government, and then the Federal Government. Wendell Phillips—Garrison’s close ally—testified in front of the Massachusetts legislature in 1841, on the issue of Railroad Desegregation (the abolitionists began a boycott campaign only after the State Government failed to act on the issue). This is a description of the event from his biography:

Privately owned railroads received “special privileges and franchises” from the state, he argued. The state, therefore had the right and the duty to make these enterprises treat all citizens as equals. “These corporations are public servants,” Phillips maintained,” and therefore bound to serve in accordance with the laws of the commonwealth,” which had been designed “to secure the rights of all the people.”…Since law, according to Phillips, must insure the public’s good above all else, legislators should override the private choices of the segregationists…. As Phillips had made clear during this contest, however, he now equated racial equality with the public’s good and insisted that positive law must prevent an individual’s discriminatory use of private property.” (Brewer p. 98-99)

No politician was as associated with the abolitionist legacy as Charles Sumner. Sumner devoted the last of his life to passing a Civil Rights Bill that would, in the words of Eric Foner “Guarantee all citizens equal access to public accommodations, common carriers, public schools, churches, cemeteries, and jury service.” (504) As he died, Sumner whispered to a visitor “you must take care of the civil rights bill… don’t let it fail.” (533) But fail it did, shot down by compromises in the Senate, and then a Supreme Court, and so segregation lasted, in much of America, for another 100 years.

In case the point isn’t obvious, Rand Paul’s idea of how to fight segregation and racism is simply nonsense. The power of privately owned business, institutions, and individuals is too great to be fought simply by consumer choices and moral suasion.