Rich, I had a little exchange with Matt Yglesias on this yesterday. It went something like this:

Me: I think most libertarians would be happy to grant that philosophical abstractions are feeble in the face of the historical crime of institutional racism, if progressives would grant that the Commerce Clause was willfully misread in an effort to right the wrongs.
Yglesias: No, the conservative reading of the Commerce Clause is silly.

Well, then.

I was also struck by Gibbs saying that Rand Paul’s thoughts on the Civil Rights Act “shouldn’t have a place in our political discourse” — no wonder we’re a “nation of cowards” afraid to talk about race.