Smearing Goldwater on Civil Rights

Yglesias:

if someone called me a racist I’d get pretty indignant about it. Nobody likes that accusation. And I wouldn’t like to see someone I admire get that accusation leveled at them. But at the same time—and this is the crucial difference between progressives and conservatives on this front—I also get indignant about actual racism. Glenn Beck, by contrast, like most conservatives, think that the preeminent racial problem in the United States is that white people are too put upon by political correctness. Conservatives are very very very concerned about this alleged problem of anti-racism run amok. And they’re very concerned about the alleged problem of reverse discrimination. But they don’t seem concerned at all about racism or discrimination and certainly not nearly as concerned as they about helping out the poor, put-upon white man.

And it’s not just a quirk of Beck’s. This attitude goes deep in the DNA of the modern conservative movement. National Review’s position on Civil Rights was that segregation was bad, but the cure of the civil rights movement was worse than the disease of white supremacy. Barry Goldwater campaigned for president on the proposition that Jim Crow might be bad, but not nearly so bad as the Civil Rights Act. As the policy status quo shifted, the precise nature of the conservative position changed with it so that now affirmative action is worse than discrimination against minorities and “political correctness” is worse than racism, but the basic spirit is the same.

The fact that many conservatives don't oppose discrimination as vociferously as they oppose reverse discrimination is unfortunate.  The right certainly has its share of this particular breed of bigotry.

But Goldwater did not oppose the Civil Rights Act as a whole--he took the libertarian position of opposing Title II, which:

Outlawed discrimination in hotels, motels, restaurants, theaters, and all other public accommodations engaged in interstate commerce; exempted private clubs without defining the term "private."

Here, strong support for private freedom of association is the key difference between libertarianism and intrusive modern liberalism.  Libertarians only support anti-discrimination measures in the public sphere.   Hotels, motels, restaurants, and theaters are private enterprise.

Goldwater was a moral man who would not himself operate a business that discriminated. But he respected others' right to do so on first ammendment grounds.  That, my friends, is being a true defender of of the Constitution and individual liberty—something both parties have largely forgotten about these days, with rare exceptions like Ron Paul.