Since winning Kentucky’s Republican Senate primary this week, tea party activist Rand Paul is causing a stir by criticizing federal disability and civil rights laws.
Paul’s victory Tuesday was seen as a milestone for the grassroots tea party movement, which advocates for smaller government and less spending. But in relishing the win, Paul — the son of Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas — may have gone too far. He’s taking heat now after telling National Public Radio in an interview earlier this week that he believes both the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 represent overreaches of the federal government.
“I think a lot of things could be handled locally,” Paul said in the interview, which aired on All Things Considered. “I think if you have a two-story office and you hire someone who’s handicapped, it might be reasonable to let him have an office on the first floor rather than the government saying you have to have a $100,000 elevator. And I think when you get to the solutions like that, the more local the better, and the more common sense the decisions are, rather than having a federal government make those decisions.”
The comments were met with an strong backlash from his Democratic opponent in the Kentucky Senate race, Jack Conway.
“No matter how he tries to spin to the contrary, the fact is that Paul’s ideology has dangerous consequences for working families, veterans, students, the disabled and those without a voice in the halls of power,” Conway said in a statement.
Paul’s comments could also have an impact beyond Kentucky since the self-described tea party candidate, represents the movement’s first major victory. An intentionally leaderless movement, a recent poll conducted by USA Today/Gallup found that 28 percent of Americans support the tea party.
The situation Paul describes would be perfectly legal under the ADA. Maybe he doesn’t know that.
Anything to make Rand Paul look bad. This man is not against people with disabilities or taking away anyone’s civil rights. Quite the contrary. He advocates for people’s liberites. The one thing he is against is big government. He likes people to have local control over their lives, instead of the federal government sticking their nose into everything. Maybe he could use a refresher on ADA laws, but he’s not against them or wanting to change or do away with them.
I realize I’m preaching to the choir here, but rather than taking umbrage at Paul Rand’s view in general (which I do… with a vehemence), I just want to point out one of the failures in Paul Rand’s logic, and in the logic of so many people who think from a place of fear rather than inclusion. He asserts that being required to install an elevator for an employee with a wheelchair is excessive. But not only is restricting that employee to the first floor (if left to Paul’s devices) discrimination, it’s just simple narrow thinking. The real world reality is that this elevator would end up being used by far more people than the person with the wheelchair. It would be an investment in all the people working for and visiting that company. People carrying boxes, the UPS guy, someone using crutches or a wheeled briefcase, etc., etc.
Then the question is: how do you educate people like him who can’t think outside his tiny box? Seriously.
@gdonahue:
If we could trust people’s good intentions and desire to work for the greater good, then giving over such decisions to local control would be great. Of course that would be preferable in a perfect world. But time and history has proven that it doesn’t work. If we aren’t all held to greater standards of fairness, factionalism leads to narrow thinking which leads to discrimination. As evidence by the logic that I state above. That’s why such federal legislation exists. Otherwise, we wouldn’t need it. Plain and simple.
This Local Control/States’ Rights argument is fundamentally flawed. The failure of both the States and local government to “step up” and take action required the federal government to intercede.
The various States gave us Jim Crow laws, literacy tests for voting, and institutions to warehouse people with disabilities where countless atrocities continue to be practiced. Just to name a few reasons why rights protected by the Constitution of the United States must be enforced by the federal system of government. Be it Congress, the Courts or the various Agencies of the Executive Branch.
It is not “anything to make Rand Paul look bad.” These are his words and either show a dangerous naivete about what the various States have done or he is consciously willing to sacrifice the rights of millions of Americans under the guise being “against big government.”
Either way, he needs to be honest about what his goals are before trying to effect “change” by using a sledgehammer.
Just to echo what Spokes said, Disability Scoop recently posted an article about such abuses in Arkansas (http://www.disabilityscoop.com/2010/05/06/justice-dept-arkansas/7958/). Other states have similar stories. ADA and Civil Rights Act have helped make our society more inclusive and broadened economic opportunities for people who were previously excluded. Is this not better for our country’s economy overall?