One of the best songs in history. Released 39 years ago, on May 21, 1971 – only 7 years after the Civil Rights Act was passed. And thanks to Rand Paul and the Tea Party, we’re talking about lunch counters again.
The person who put this video up says, “I wanted to try and capture the essence of the time when Marvin first presented this song.” The audio is the original.
Rand Paul just wants a nap.
- (TPM: after the Maddow appearance, Paul floundered around for most of the day on Thursday, first putting out a statement that said he was opposed to repealing the civil rights act, then saying he actually supported the section of the bill he said he didn’t like and finally stating he would have voted ‘yes’ on the bill had he been in Congress back in mid-sixties.)
Why does Rand Paul (and his GOP / Tea Party supporters) hate America?
Rand Paul believes that the federal government blurred the lines between public and private property when it passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and made it illegal for private businesses to discriminate on the basis of race.
Paul: I’m not in favor of any discrimination of any form. I would never belong to any club that excluded anybody for race. We still do have private clubs in America that can discriminate based on race. But do discriminate.
But I think what’s important in this debate is not getting into any specific “gotcha” on this, but asking the question ‘What about freedom of speech?’ Should we limit speech from people we find abhorrent. Should we limit racists from speaking. I don’t want to be associated with those people, but I also don’t want to limit their speech in any way in the sense that we tolerate boorish and uncivilized behavior because that’s one of the things that freedom requires is that we allow people to be boorish and uncivilized, but that doesn’t mean we approve of it…
Maddow:… How about desegregating lunch counters?
Paul: Well what it gets into then is if you decide that restaurants are publicly owned and not privately owned, then do you say that you should have the right to bring your gun into a restaurant even though the owner of the restaurant says ‘well no, we don’t want to have guns in here’ the bar says ‘we don’t want to have guns in here because people might drink and start fighting and shoot each-other.’ Does the owner of the restaurant own his restaurant? Or does the government own his restaurant? These are important philosophical debates but not a very practical discussion…
Maddow: Well, it was pretty practical to the people who had the life nearly beaten out of them trying to desegregate Walgreen’s lunch counters despite these esoteric debates about what it means about ownership. This is not a hypothetical Dr. Paul.
No wonder the neo-Nazis at Stormfront and the Tea Party support Rand Paul!
[HuffPo]
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