In today’s Jewish World Review:

Libertarian Rand Paul, Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate from Kentucky, shocked many conservatives when he refused to give full-throated support for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Act criminalized public sector racial discrimination, and struck down laws that required discrimination and segregation. But it went much further. It outlawed racial discrimination by private actors such as restaurant and hotel owners who refused to serve blacks.

Yes, it did.

Funnily enough, though, we have here a bill that was passed by Republicans whose stipulation, as described above, was extension of its equality provisions to the private sector. Since we all know that it was Democrats who were doing most of the persecuting (see the all Democrat, all the time KKK as a prime example), the Republicans were, in effect, protecting the rights of blacks from Democrats.

Now a libertarian, who by definition is much closer to a Republican than to a Democrat, who says he doesn’t believe the government should force private businessmen to tow the line, is under fire from the Democrats, who voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to begin with.

The word “convoluted” comes to my mind.

Rand’s critics also unintentionally expose the condescending way “compassionate conservatives” deem that blacks — still standing after slavery and Jim Crow — are in need of protection by rare “noble” whites from the bigot-infested world through which blacks are obviously incapable of navigating. Why else throw overboard the just and basic principle that private actors, short of engaging in force or fraud, should behave as they wish?

What about the pro-life pharmacist who considers it immoral to stock and sell the morning-after pill? What about the landlady who thinks homosexuality is immoral and refuses to rent to a gay couple? What if she refuses to rent to an illegal alien? What about the “morally straight” Boy Scouts organization that discriminates against an openly gay scoutmaster? What about the healthy 25-year-old who refuses to purchase health insurance?

Republicans go all deer-in-the-headlights when someone questions their colorblind bona fides. But when Nazi sympathizers want publicly to march, many conservatives correctly defend the “right.” Constitutional rights extend to both saints and sinners and those in between, no matter the outrage — in this instance of Jewish Holocaust survivors over the prospect of swastika-wearing fascists parading through their neighborhood.

This is freedom 101.

I find Larry Elder’s point of view highly defensable, and by extension, Rand Paul’s. Now, I also understand that the name “Paul” is not among the favorites in the GOP’s house, but on the other hand, because Rand Paul is actually right here, I wonder why the Republicans can’t seem to find the time to lend him just a little support.

Oh, I forgot.

No matter how hard they are now fighting to protect our liberty from Obama and his lefties, they are still the same Republicans who let us down in the first half of this decade and as a result lost both houses of Congress to the “progressive” lefty legions of Pelosi and Reid, and they don’t want to rock any vote-getting boats that might restore them to the majority on Capital Hill…So they can revert back to the lackadaisical, complacent, “career first, America second” fatcats they were before.

The well-intended, but misguided, passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 — as applied to private conduct — sought to change not only whites’ behavior but also their “feelings.” Some blacks perceive racial hostility toward them from their local Korean grocer. But if treated with a smile and offered quality goods at fair prices, most blacks patronize the store. People expect and respond to a certain measure of respect as a customer, regardless of how the proprietors may personally “feel” about them.

Instead of defending Paul on this issue against race-card-playing leftists like MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, conservatives/Republicans/pundits panicked. How are we to get the country back on the course set by its Founders if we cannot stand with the Rand Pauls of the nation on the bedrock principle of maximum personal liberty?

Well said.