Like Father, Like Son

News outlets are reporting that Tea Party candidate Rand Paul beat out the establishment Republican candidate in the Kentucky GOP Senate primary. Paul is the son of Texas Representative Ron Paul, who made a brief run for the White House back in 2008. Paul Jr. seems to have inherited his father’s dim view of civil rights legislation, as evidenced in these comments he made in opposition to the Americans with Disabilities Act:

You know a lot of things on employment ought to be done locally. You know, people finding out right or wrong locally. You know, some of the things, for example we can come up with common sense solutions — like for example if you have a three story building and you have someone apply for a job, you get them a job on the first floor if they’re in a wheelchair as supposed to making the person who owns the business put an elevator in, you know what I mean? So things like that aren’t fair to the business owner.

Paul’s Tea Party vision of America would require people with disabilities to depend on the good graces of others to determine whether they will be accommodated. Of course, the whole premise of civil rights legislation is that the oppressed group cannot reliably depend on the good graces of a frequently indifferent or hostile majority.

Paul and his ilk are deeply fond of portraying themselves as defenders of liberty, but theirs seems to be an exclusive brand of liberty that leaves out s many of the ordinary people they claim to represent. It’s just the kind of mentality that deserves to be called elitist.