Rand Paul is not a racist.

How do I know? Because I used to think just like him.

For many years, not only was I a libertarian, but a Libertarian with a capital "L." That's right; a card-carrying, dues-paying member of the Party. Why? Because I believed in the rights of the individual vs. the rights of the collective. Because I believed in minimal government. Not just small government, but minimal government. You know; courts, national defense, police -- and that's about it. The private sector could take care of the rest; it was more efficient that way. And besides, that's how the Founding Fathers had intended it. It made a lot of sense to me.

Just like Chris Matthews and Hillary Clinton before me, I began my political journey as a Goldwater Republican. I read The Conscience of a Conservative in high school and all of Ayn Rand's novels (and much of her non-fiction), beginning in the 1980s. While working on the trading floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, I internalized Rule Number One: The markets are always right. (Rule Number Two? When in doubt, refer back to Rule Number One.) For example, if you're long and the market drops, then you're wrong, because the market is always right. In fact, the market can't be wrong; it's like a thermometer--it only reflects reality. And when I went to grad school, my thinking was reinforced further; we were taught that the markets were perfectly efficient. (I've often wondered how my old finance professors would explain the all-time high in the stock market that occurred in October, 2007, during the quarter in which the Great Recession began.)

My politics reflected my belief in the markets. As recently as February, 2008, I voted for Ron Paul for president in the Illinois Republican primary. Call it my last gasp of libertarianism. The following November, I cast my ballot for Barack Obama and haven't looked back. In fact, I think he's on track to becoming one of the best presidents of my lifetime.

Why the sea change? To paraphrase the Grateful Dead, it's been a long, strange trip. Or maybe not so strange. After all, people do change their minds, especially when confronted with new information (like a financial collapse). Or sometimes by just rethinking their ideology. (A great example of this is Witness, the memoirs of Whittaker Chambers, the former Communist.)

At some point, it dawned on me that there were two worlds: the libertarian utopia that existed mostly in my head and the real one that existed everywhere else. Eventually I had to make a decision; I chose reality. The real world has real problems; you can either daydream your life away or try to come up with real solutions.

Or maybe my metamorphosis was just a function of age. After all, when you're 25 anything seems possible; when you're fifty-something, the time for revolution is running out.

Maybe I just grew up.

Libertarianism, like any ideology, is nothing if not consistent. And that's a big part of its appeal. It attempts to simplify a complex universe; everything fits neatly into its framework. I think that's what some people mean when they say that it's "elegant." Libertarians, like all ideologues, have an answer for everything. In their case, it's usually some variation of "government bad; private sector good." In fact, if you listen to these people, it's always the government's fault -- somehow. Just give me some time and I'll find it. The housing bubble? Fannie and Freddie. Jim Crow? Those were state laws. I could go on and on. Just pick up the Wall Street Journal any day and you'll see what I mean. It's always the fault of the government. The world of the ideologue is very simple. Everything is black and white; there are no shades of gray. It's all very straightforward. And lazy.

There's only one problem with ideology: It doesn't always work in the real world.

Take Rand Paul's stance on the 1964 Civil Rights Act. It prohibits, among other things, private businesses from discriminating against certain customers. Libertarians, understandably, were up in arms over this. After all, if a business is privately owned, then the owner should be able to do whatever he wants with it and serve whomever he wants. (Heck, he should be able to blow the darn thing up with dynamite if he so chooses.) And if the community doesn't like the way he runs it, then they can choose not to buy from him. It's very simple; the market will discipline him. Makes perfect sense; again, it's elegant. Except that there's only one small problem. It didn't work that way. The market didn't correct the Jim Crow laws in the South. And the market never would. Why? Because the majority of southerners were quite content with the status quo. Whites weren't the ones pressing for change.

So Americans were faced with a choice: honor the rights of private property owners or correct a profound injustice. Or, put another way, adhere rigidly to a set of abstract principles or do the right thing. Thankfully, LBJ and the Congress did the right thing and America is a better place for it -- for all of us. I'll bet there are southern whites who think to themselves from time to time, How could we have possibly thought that segregation was just? I know Barry Goldwater and William Buckley had regrets.

So is Rand Paul a racist? Again, no. Just a rigid ideologue.