A recent flurry of measures intended to permit discrimination against LGBT people in states across the country proves that civil rights laws are no longer needed in the U.S., according to conservative columnist Pat Buchanan.

“A radical idea: Suppose we repealed the civil rights laws and fired all the bureaucrats enforcing these laws,” Buchanan wrote in a syndicated column published Tuesday.

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“Does anyone think hotels, motels and restaurants across Dixie, from D.C. to Texas, would stop serving black customers?” he wondered. “Does anyone think there would again be signs sprouting up reading ‘whites’ and ‘colored’ on drinking foundations and restrooms?”

Buchanan, who has a long history of expressing bigoted opinions about minorities, argues that civil rights laws have already served their purpose and should be repealed.

“Why do we need this vast army of bureaucrats?” Buchanan wrote. “They exist to validate the slander that America is a racist, sexist, homophobic and xenophobic country which would revert to massive discrimination were it not for heroic progressives standing guard.”

He takes aim at opponents of anti-LGBT discrimination laws under consideration in states such as Arizona, Georgia, Idaho, and Kansas.

Buchanan cited a comment by an ACLU spokesman who argued that religious freedom does not grant “a blank check to … impose our faith on our neighbors.”

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“Who is imposing his views and values here?” Buchanan asked. “What we are seeing in Arizona in microcosm is what we have witnessed in America for half a century: the growing intolerance of those who preach tolerance and the corruption of the concept of civil rights.”

He said some bigots would no doubt “revert to type” if civil rights laws were repealed.

But Buchanan argued that “free people deal with social misconduct with social sanctions” – just as he willingly and humbly shouldered the consequences handed down to him by his former employer, MSNBC, for racist remarks in a book he’d written.

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[Image via Victory New Hampshire’s Flickr Photostream]