Thursday May 20, 2010

LAST GO-ROUND FOR RAND. Though Paul the Younger has capitulated, at Reason the libertarians hold aloft the Old Standard:

But this controversy does raise the very important topic of the government’s central role in American racism. First and foremost, Jim Crow was a legal regime, one that relied on state and local laws to restrict the political, social, and economic liberty of African Americans... we’re talking primarily about state action, not about some failure of the free market.

Similarly, slavery was a legal regime. As with Jim Crow, those poor white Southerners had no choice but to obey the law despite their inclinations, which would naturally have had them follow the enlightened, emancipating course of the Free Market -- that is, surrendering their unpaid laborers.

That's why white Southerners rejoiced when Jim Crow was overthrown. Further proof that the gummint that gums least gums best!

What planet are they from, and can they be sent back?

UPDATE. The rightblogger consensus is that Rand Paul was smeared by being quoted accurately -- the liberal media is more nefarious than we knew! -- and that Jonah Goldberg works very short days.