If you’re interested in signing a petition asking Rand Paul to support Red & Black Café’s right to bar cops from their premises, click here.
(I don’t know how thrilled the Café would be with Paul’s support – but I doubt they’re at much risk of getting it ….)
The Empirical Me
I’m Roderick T. Long, Professor of Philosophy at Auburn University. I’m an Aristotelean/Wittgensteinian in philosophy and a left-libertarian market anarchist in social theory. (More about me here.) This blog, Austro-Athenian Empire, is a continuation of my earlier blog, archived here.
Oh, I don’t know, Roderick. As strongly as he believes in private business owners’ freedom of association, I expect he’ll be all over this.
It’s one of those times when I can’t tell if you’re joking Kevin.
Joking? Why would I be joking? Surely you’re not suggesting Rand Paul is the kind of man who would defend private discrimination against black folks, but oppose it against cops, just to pander to the redneck sympathies of his Tea Party constituents. Heaven forfend!
And surely the people behind the petition wouldn’t be so evil as to attempt to point out any such purported inconsistency.
Has anyone made an attempt to bring the petition to the awareness of Rand Paul’s campaign people? While a clever idea, just having an online petition doesn’t mean Rand Paul’s going to be conscious of it to make a decision.
I Imagine they’re going to collect a few more signatures first.
Yeah, it’s only in the low 50s at the moment.
I think it’s a great idea. It would get the left off his back don’t you think?
The radical left might like the idea of barring cops, but the mainstream left is going to be a lot less sympathetic.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d93CU_Lkxog
This just in: Tea Party conservatives are ignorant police statist blowhards who prefer to make Dirty Hippy jokes rather than standing on anti-statist principle.
Film at 11.
Rad Geek, do you think the police should exist? Oh why do you hate society?
I’m not big on dirty hippy stuff, but this almost makes me want to pay the place a visit.
P.S. I’m surprised he didn’t slip in a mention of Somalia.
Actual comment from on that video:
“The hypocrisy shown in this video of the Oregon Tea Party is astounding! Its seems like the Oregon Tea Party and the anarchists of Red and Black are very close cousins. Both? with their disrespect of leadership. In every way I support the police officers of PPD and in now way do I condone the actions of Red and Black…but you all aren’t too pretty either.”
Oh. For fuck’s sake.
I signed the petition!
Although there’s obviously zero chance of getting Paul’s support, I think it’s a clever idea to get people talking.
Perhaps someone could also start circulating a petition asking Rand Paul to extend his professed support for ‘freedom of association’ to Americans’ freedom to associate with people born in Mexico.
If he doesn’t at least state that he honors Red & Black’s right to exclude I’d actually be surprised. I seriously doubt you’ll get him showing up and shaking hands – he is after all campaigning in Kentucky – but this is a good litmus test for whether he’s a true or faux libertarian.
Why would he make any statement about it one way or the other if he can avoid doing so? He hardly wants to alienate his conservative supporters by saying he supports it, or to alienate his libertarian supporters by saying he doesn’t, if there’s any chance of just not making a statement.
Do we really need a litmus test at this point?
He’s not even a faux libertarian. He has repeatedly said that he’s not a libertarian but a conservative.
He claims to be a conservative, but maybe he’s really a faux libertarian.
I signed the petition.
I’m sorry, but anyone who thinks Rand Paul is libertarian enough for any voting libertarian’s vote is simply self-deluded. Not only has he explicitly denied being a libertarian, he’s said that libertarianism is an “albatross” that the mainstream media has been trying to “hang around [his] neck”:
http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1972721,00.html
So I think I know what his answer to the petition would be. And why any professed libertarian would think he’s worth sticking up for is really baffling.
And I second Charles’ Tea Party analysis.
Paul seems to have forgotten that the reason the Ancient Mariner had to have an albatross hung around his neck is that he had shot the albatross and thereby doomed the whole crew.
http://www.redblackcafe.com/
I wonder if there’ll be calls to boycott the Middletown one for refusing solidarity with the Portland one.