"it's not about whether or not you have black friends; this is about how you're going to let people be treated in this country"

Ben Jealous, President and CEO of the NAACP, helps Rachel Maddow break down why its important to address Kentucky Republican Senatorial nominee Rand Paul's disturbing statements that equal opportunity laws like the Civil Rights Act and the Fair Housing Act should not exist:

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Amanda Marcotte goes further, pointing to this as an important teaching moment regarding the American version of libertarianism, and how libertarian assaults on the Commerce Clause meld racism and laissez faire, anti-regulation capitalism:

Because self-identified libertarians are a tiny minority doesn’t mean that libertarian thought doesn’t enjoy widespread popularity amongst conservative Republicans. Indeed, libertarianism is the primary intellectual justification in this country for resistance to most social justice movements. (I use the term “intellectual” loosely here, but you know what I mean.) It is also the primary intellectual justification for unchecked corporate power that leads to disasters like our collapsed economy and the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. And I would argue that the existence of the Republican party today depends largely on people who are invested in the latter exploiting people invested in the former for support and votes.