I have paid absolutely no attention to Ron Paul or his candidacy for President on the Republican ticket. But I have noticed that he gets a lot of hits on Technorati. Still, he ain't gonna get the nomination so who cares? I am vaguely aware that anti-Republicans like him for some strange reason. Well look what I just found.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 gave the federal government unprecedented power over the hiring, employee relations, and customer service practices of every business in the country. The result was a massive violation of the rights of private property and contract, which are the bedrocks of free society. The federal government has no legitimate authority to infringe on the rights of private property owners to use their property as they please and to form (or not form) contracts with terms mutually agreeable to all parties. The rights of all private property owners, even those whose actions decent people find abhorrent, must be respected if we are to maintain a free society.
This expansion of federal power was based on an erroneous interpretation of the congressional power to regulate interstate commerce. The framers of the Constitution intended the interstate commerce clause to create a free trade zone among the states, not to give the federal government regulatory power over every business that has any connection with interstate commerce.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 not only violated the Constitution and reduced individual liberty; it also failed to achieve its stated goals of promoting racial harmony and a color-blind society. Federal bureaucrats and judges cannot read minds to see if actions are motivated by racism. Therefore, the only way the federal government could ensure an employer was not violating the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was to ensure that the racial composition of a business's workforce matched the racial composition of a bureaucrat or judge's defined body of potential employees. Thus, bureaucrats began forcing employers to hire by racial quota. Racial quotas have not contributed to racial harmony or advanced the goal of a color-blind society. Instead, these quotas encouraged racial balkanization, and fostered racial strife.
Paul bloviates with some expediency. He's not altogether misstating the facts, but he's pretty unsubtle in the details. I mean really. There was no massive violation of private property rights or any fundamental change in the way contract law is run in America. There might have been a potential for that in terms of the way the law was put together, but that certainly wasn't the intent - it just addresses the scope of civil rights, which is massive. To suggest that quotas were the only mechanism Civil Rights enforcement for is downright deceptive, but it's an old trick and we've heard it before from Clint Bolick.
Is this the stuff that has got people talking about Ron Paul? Not that I care about Ron Paul.
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