After walking into the trap set by the insufferable Rachel Maddow, some defense of Rand Paul is in order.

Despite strongly and clearly denouncing racism, he was still falsely accused by many who willfully ignored the larger point he was trying to make. He understands that in a free country (or one that is supposed to be anyway), a government has a limited role to play and should adhere to it.

J.E. Dyer over at HotAir put together a lengthy defense of Rand Paul. Here are some highlights:

The Paul record on the Civil Rights Act is a particularly telling issue because quite a few Republicans are terrified of being seen as violating an article of faith - even though the highly questionable assumption of federal authority to regulate business practices in this realm is the same assumption at issue with the individual health insurance mandate.  It’s to the advantage of only the left, for this assumption to be considered sacrosanct and beyond question because of what the assumption was made for.

Federal overreach in a good cause is still federal overreach.  Republicans must reflect on this fact:  that if we refuse to reexamine the loose thinking about federal authority in the Civil Rights Act - thinking that was strongly opposed by many at the time, as older readers will remember - then we have already ceded the principle of federal overreach, and, by our own agreement, there is nothing the US federal government can’t do to us.

Conservative columnist Rich Lowry writes: “I’m sympathetic to libertarianism, but it sometimes has a weakness for theoretical exercises removed from reality.”

Larry Elder (a black man and self-described Republitarian) has written a very good response to all those frightened conservatives who, by their silence, allow liberals to control this issue.

[Lowry's article] sounds like a white, guilt-ridden rationalization to justify an abandonment of principle. And it has real world, not merely “theoretical,” consequences. For one thing, it encourages grievance-driven race-based identity politics - and invites special-interest legislation to protect all manner of niche groups perceived as having been “held down by The Man.” It is in these waters that professional victim seekers and exploiters like the Rev. Al Sharpton, race and gender “advocacy groups,” and the Democratic Party do their fishing.

Rand’s critics also unintentionally expose the condescending way “compassionate conservatives” deem that blacks - still standing after slavery and Jim Crow - are in need of protection by rare “noble” whites from the bigot-infested world through which blacks are obviously incapable of navigating. Why else throw overboard the just and basic principle that private actors, short of engaging in force or fraud, should behave as they wish?

What about the pro-life pharmacist who considers it immoral to stock and sell the morning-after pill? What about the landlady who thinks homosexuality is immoral and refuses to rent to a gay couple? What if she refuses to rent to an illegal alien? What about the “morally straight” Boy Scouts organization that discriminates against an openly gay scoutmaster? What about the healthy 25-year-old who refuses to purchase health insurance?

…It is this freedom to discriminate that enabled Black Entertainment Television founder Robert Johnson to become a billionaire through the use of race-based programming. It is this freedom that allows the Miss Black America beauty pageant to exclude non-black applicants. It is this freedom that allows private colleges and universities to discriminate against white applicants with higher SAT scores to achieve “diversity” by helping the “underrepresented.” The Congressional Black Caucus discriminates when it refuses membership to whites, as it did recently to a white Tennessee representative even though he represents a majority black district.

…The well-intended, but misguided, passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 - as applied to private conduct - sought to change not only whites’ behavior but also their “feelings.” Some blacks perceive racial hostility toward them from their local Korean grocer. But if treated with a smile and offered quality goods at fair prices, most blacks patronize the store. People expect and respond to a certain measure of respect as a customer, regardless of how the proprietors may personally “feel” about them.

Instead of defending Paul on this issue against race-card-playing leftists like MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, conservatives/Republicans/pundits panicked. How are we to get the country back on the course set by its Founders if we cannot stand with the Rand Pauls of the nation on the bedrock principle of maximum personal liberty?

Rand Paul should not be admonished for being concerned about the condition of liberty in this country.