May 24, 2010--"Sometimes Accidents Happen"
So said Rand Paul, the Republican and Tea Party candidate for the vacant Kentucky Senate seat. He was talking about last month's coal mining disaster in West Virginia where 29 miners were killed.
Yes, sometimes true, blameless accidents do happen--when a volcano erupts or an earthquake hits or when something unexpected occurs at a work site where no fault can be assigned to either the company or the injured worker. But in the case of last month's deaths at the Massey Energy coal mine, since the company had ignored literally hundreds of safety violations, moral and legal blame can be assigned. It was not simply a case of an accident that just happened.
So Rand Paul's take on it, derived from his so-called Libertarian ideology, was an inadequate and heartless response.
At its best, Libertarianism is a set of beliefs, and beliefs they are, that calls for minimal institutional or governmental intervention in the lives of individuals. It asserts that individuals are essentially good and thus should be allowed to live unfettered lives. In contrast, governments by their nature are coercive and thus need to be strictly limited. Applied appropriately, it is hard to disagree with much of this.
Libertarians particularly stress the inviolable property rights of individuals. Everything derives from allowing individuals to acquire, hold, and do pretty much anything they want with their property. Thus, Dr. Paul's take on Massey Energy--it's the company's property and therefore they should be allowed to do with it anything they please. Workers should know when they sign on that they are working at someone else's private property and that whatever happens happens. If they are concerned about things such as safety, don't expect the government to monitor conditions; rather if they do not want to assume the risks, go work somewhere else. In an office, for example. And if the building in which the office is located has asbestos insulation, don't whine and complain and expect the government to come to their assistance, simple find different work.
Rand Paul's comments about the West Virginia mining disaster came a few days after he won the Republican primary. In was an add-on comment to his views about how BP is handling the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Again, since BP is a private company and is entitled to drill for oil in the Gulf (he forgot for the moment that they have a government license to do so), he was highly critical of the Obama administration for taking a tough stance with BP. According to the linked article in the New York Times he called it "un-American."
In a Tweeter posting, Paul blasted President Obama for insisting that BP be held accountable for the disaster. Or pay for the clean-up. He wrote, "What I don't like from the president's administration is this sort of, 'I'll put my boot heel on the throat of BP.' I think that sounds really un-American in his criticism of business. . . I think it's part of the sort of blame-game society in this sense that it's always got to be someones fault that sometimes accidents happen."
In addition to his verbal skills making Sarah Palin's seem like she's another Demonsthenes, these absurd comments about Massey Energy and BP place Rand Paul even further outside the mainstream of even 19th century political thought than his more-widely criticized thoughts about the 1964 Civil Rights Act because, under pressure, he did at least force himself to say that maybe some sort of government intervention was required back then if African-Americans were being forbidden from using public accommodations such as toilets at gas stations and lunch counters at segregated restaurants.
Up to know, Libertarianism has had the patina of attractiveness and respectability since, when calling for government to get out of our lives, it also calls for it to get out of our bedrooms (thus, homosexuality is not condemned) and to leave our bodies alone (women should not be told by government what to do about their pregnancies). Even liberals can be enticed to nod in agreement about this.
But when Rand Paul and many others who cloak themselves in the mantle of Libertarianism (his father Ron included) proclaim that the BPs and Massey Energies of the world should be allowed to operate without any government monitoring or discriminated minorities should have to fend for themselves, not well hidden behind that curtain of respectability is a heartlessness and racism that can no longer be ignored. And, with Rand Paul, is being exposed.
Yes, sometimes true, blameless accidents do happen--when a volcano erupts or an earthquake hits or when something unexpected occurs at a work site where no fault can be assigned to either the company or the injured worker. But in the case of last month's deaths at the Massey Energy coal mine, since the company had ignored literally hundreds of safety violations, moral and legal blame can be assigned. It was not simply a case of an accident that just happened.
So Rand Paul's take on it, derived from his so-called Libertarian ideology, was an inadequate and heartless response.
At its best, Libertarianism is a set of beliefs, and beliefs they are, that calls for minimal institutional or governmental intervention in the lives of individuals. It asserts that individuals are essentially good and thus should be allowed to live unfettered lives. In contrast, governments by their nature are coercive and thus need to be strictly limited. Applied appropriately, it is hard to disagree with much of this.
Libertarians particularly stress the inviolable property rights of individuals. Everything derives from allowing individuals to acquire, hold, and do pretty much anything they want with their property. Thus, Dr. Paul's take on Massey Energy--it's the company's property and therefore they should be allowed to do with it anything they please. Workers should know when they sign on that they are working at someone else's private property and that whatever happens happens. If they are concerned about things such as safety, don't expect the government to monitor conditions; rather if they do not want to assume the risks, go work somewhere else. In an office, for example. And if the building in which the office is located has asbestos insulation, don't whine and complain and expect the government to come to their assistance, simple find different work.
Rand Paul's comments about the West Virginia mining disaster came a few days after he won the Republican primary. In was an add-on comment to his views about how BP is handling the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Again, since BP is a private company and is entitled to drill for oil in the Gulf (he forgot for the moment that they have a government license to do so), he was highly critical of the Obama administration for taking a tough stance with BP. According to the linked article in the New York Times he called it "un-American."
In a Tweeter posting, Paul blasted President Obama for insisting that BP be held accountable for the disaster. Or pay for the clean-up. He wrote, "What I don't like from the president's administration is this sort of, 'I'll put my boot heel on the throat of BP.' I think that sounds really un-American in his criticism of business. . . I think it's part of the sort of blame-game society in this sense that it's always got to be someones fault that sometimes accidents happen."
In addition to his verbal skills making Sarah Palin's seem like she's another Demonsthenes, these absurd comments about Massey Energy and BP place Rand Paul even further outside the mainstream of even 19th century political thought than his more-widely criticized thoughts about the 1964 Civil Rights Act because, under pressure, he did at least force himself to say that maybe some sort of government intervention was required back then if African-Americans were being forbidden from using public accommodations such as toilets at gas stations and lunch counters at segregated restaurants.
Up to know, Libertarianism has had the patina of attractiveness and respectability since, when calling for government to get out of our lives, it also calls for it to get out of our bedrooms (thus, homosexuality is not condemned) and to leave our bodies alone (women should not be told by government what to do about their pregnancies). Even liberals can be enticed to nod in agreement about this.
But when Rand Paul and many others who cloak themselves in the mantle of Libertarianism (his father Ron included) proclaim that the BPs and Massey Energies of the world should be allowed to operate without any government monitoring or discriminated minorities should have to fend for themselves, not well hidden behind that curtain of respectability is a heartlessness and racism that can no longer be ignored. And, with Rand Paul, is being exposed.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
5:15 AM
1 Comments:
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