“If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn’t.  And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn’t be.  And what it wouldn’t be, it would.  You see?”
                                                                                        -  Alice

Whether or not he will reign as the darling of the Tea Party in November, we’ll have to wait and see.  In the meantime, though, everyone seems to have spent the past several days talking about Rand Paul, the proud Tea Party candidate and Republican nominee for the U.S Senate, who prevailed in the Kentucky Republican primary against a candidate groomed and mentored by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. 

Within forty-eight hours of his victory, Paul found himself deep in sewage after an appearance on MSNBC’s “Rachel Maddow Show” in which he suggested he did not agree with certain parts of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  This followed his interviews on National Public Radio and MSNBC in which he said that while he opposes racial discrimination, he thought a lot of problems could be handled locally instead of through the weight of the federal government. 

The problem with Paul and his Tea Party cronies lies in the message he sounded when he kicked off his general election run by announcing that he had a “message from the Tea Party” to “take our government back.”  From his post-primary victory posturing, it appears that Paul and the Tea Party apparently mean they want to roll back established federal protections that ensure all Americans are treated as equal citizens.

Paul ‘s trashing of modern federal civil rights laws has not been confined to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  He has also stated his opposition to the Americans with Disabilities Act, positioning himself, and the Tea Party, in opposition to federal law that ensures individuals with disabilities have the same right to participate in American life as able-bodied American people.

Paul and the Tea Party like to portray themselves as fighting for the Constitution, but more and more evidence makes it clear they only care about the parts of the original Constitution that limited the powers of the federal government.  In their rush to extol states’ rights, Tea Partiers and Paul consistently ignore the rest of our most fundamental legal document, particularly the amendments to the Constitution that have made equality and protection of basic civil rights fundamental constitutional values. 

The issue over states’ rights was put to rest at Appomattox in 1865.  Since that time, amendments to the Constitution have secured the right to vote to all Americans, made our system of government more democratic, and have given the federal government the power to protect the liberty and equality of all Americans.  Today we rightly celebrate these amendments as a core part of our Constitution.  Rand Paul and the Tea Party should be celebrating the Constitution in its entirety, not just the portions that support their narrow views.

Federal laws such as the Civil Rights Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act find support both in Article I of the Constitution, which gives Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce, and in the Fourteenth Amendment which gives Congress power to enforce the liberty and equality of all citizens.  Paul and the Tea Party would have us return to a time when African Americans were second-class citizens routinely denied access to the full range of opportunities we now take for granted, to a time when lynchings, the Ku Klux Klan, barriers to voter registration and Jim Crow laws prevailed through a significant portion of the United States.  

Paul and the other guests of the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party are apparently more concerned with ensuring protection for business owners who desire to discriminate against African Americans and others than in eradicating discrimination.  In the Tea Party’s view of the Constitution, Congress should have no right to stop business owners – whether they run a luncheonette, bar, or other private establishment – from discriminating on the basis of race; they should be free to run their businesses as they wish.  If African Americans or other groups are discriminated against, that’s just too bad for them. 

This is a disgraceful argument that has no basis in the text, history or original meaning of the Constitution.  If, as they profess, Tea Partiers truly care about the Constitution then they must care about the entire document, not just the portions that support the narrow-minded America they desire.  The Tea Party does not understand that central to our constitutional order is Congress’ broad authority to ensure equal treatment of all Americans.

When Alice encountered the Mad Hatter at his tea party, he was stuck forever at 6:00.  Rand Paul and the Tea Party are stuck somewhere in the 18th Century.