REASON — Running for the U.S. Senate in 2010, Rand Paul became known as that crazy right-winger who expressed reservations about the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But in the last two years, the Kentucky Republican has emerged as his party’s most passionate voice on criminal justice reform, decrying the system’s disproportionate impact on African Americans.
You might think Paul, widely seen as a contender for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, is trying to redeem himself with black voters who were alienated by his criticism of the Civil Rights Act. Yet both positions spring from the same wariness of state power, as illustrated by the senator’s comments on the over-the-top police response to the unrest that followed the August 9 shooting of an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri.
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Paul has always said he supports the Civil Rights Act provisions that apply to racial discrimination by the government. But in 2010 he said he was not so keen on the parts of the law that ban discrimination by private businesses, likening such “abhorrent behavior” to the racist speech that we tolerate because of our commitment to individual freedom.
Not surprisingly, NAACP President Benjamin Jealous disagreed with Paul’s stance on the Civil Rights Act. But Jealous also said this: “I have got to hand it to Rand Paul. It takes some serious guts to publicly challenge such a cherished pillar of the modern American identity.”
Paul’s positions on criminal justice issues also take some serious guts. He is not just reaching out to a segment of the electorate that is overwhelmingly hostile to Republicans; he is challenging members of his own party to rethink their reflexive support of law enforcement and tough-on-crime policies.
Read more at Reason.com.
