During an interview on Fox News, Rand Paul said this with a straight face:
Speaking on Fox News, Paul reacted to Obama's repeated assertions that Republicans should win elections if they want to control the agenda in Washington. Obama has also suggested in recent days that he might pursue more executive actions -- changes made without Congress.
"The danger to majority rule -- to him sort of thinking, well, the majority voted for me, now I'm the majority, I can do whatever I want, and that there are no rules that restrain me -- that's what gave us Jim Crow," Paul said. "That's what gave us the internment of the Japanese -- that the majority said you don't have individual rights, and individual rights don't come from your creator, and they’re not guaranteed by the Constitution. It’s just whatever the majority wants."
Nothing Rand Paul does or says surprises me anymore, but he still needs to be smacked around with some facts when he says something this stupid.
Executive actions are necessary when faced with a Congress that will not or cannot actually deal with pressing issues. Since Rand Paul and his pals are the primary reason we have a Congress that can't even manage to confirm judges or do the jobs they were elected to do with regard to the budget, executive action has been necessary and offered some minimal relief to the people they govern.
His remarks about the Jim Crow era are far more disturbing. Does he not realize that southern legislatures passed actual laws segregating blacks from whites? Does he not realize that they imposed poll taxes to suppress the black vote as elected representatives. Representatives, I might add, who chose to represent white constituencies in order to oppress large swaths of their states' population?
Here's a nice list of the Jim Crow-era laws, all passed by state legislatures, not by executive action. Perhaps someone could forward the link to Rand for review.
