It is not racist to argue that a person should be able to operate their own business in whatever way they want, it is agnostic.  If they want to exclude people, so be it.  If they want to allow everyone in, so be it.  Rand could have just come out and said this, but he is too much of a politician.

Yep, I know that’s y’all’s excuse.  “I’m not racist, I just happen to support racist policies because of some other philosophy that really didn’t take off until it became unpopular to come right out and say racist things directly.”  That’s the point of the post.

Don’t know how much of the nation will realize the connection between those beliefs we call “libertarian”, and simple racism. Personally I have a very very clear understanding of it. Because as a young libertarian I was reading libertarian magazines and I was learning argument after argument about how blacks were naturally inferior, and government action to help ameliorate poverty would never work, and other assorted legalistic, disingenuous, racist shit.

And I remember how it didn’t matter anyway because, soon, The Market would soon float down on angel wings and wave its Godly Wand of the NASDAQ, and all the bad people wouldn’t be able to sell anything. Or some other ridiculous shit that I believed once.

And, because I remember that incredibly repulsive stuff and its hold over people I still care about, all I want to do now is put a stake through the heart of the libertarian belief, and hear it scream unholy screams as its loathsome undead flesh ages a thousand years in an instant, and blows away in a mini-cyclone of charnel house filth and ancient evil. And watch its blood-engorged soul die.

Shorter anoNY: ‘It’s not racist to decide who you’ll let in your store solely on the basis of their skin color!’

To be fair, the Libertarian view rose to prominence during the era of a lot of other regulations as well.  A quick perusal of one of the Teabaggers public hissy fits will show you a lot of racist Libertarians, no doubt, but there are plenty of other reasons to oppose government intervention, and some of them are pretty persuasive (agricultural policy springs to mind).

What a fucking weasel, “I’m not a racist, I would march with MLK!  But I oppose this bill, well just parts of the bill, you know, the most important parts of the bill, but businesses shouldn’t discriminate even though they should have the right to and bla bla bla…”

Fuck you Rand Paul, you racist dickass!

#5

but there are plenty of other reasons to oppose government intervention, and some of them are pretty persuasive (agricultural policy springs to mind).

So, because one governmental policy is bad, we should scrap governmental regulation of commerce? Doesn’t compute.

@4

Fortunately, that is not what I said.  I said that it is not racist to argue that others should be allowed to make that decision.  It is racist to decide not to let someone in based on their race.

Well, it is racist, anoNY, if you don’t want to allow black people to use your facilities.  It’s legal as long as you run your private business as a private business. 

Yep, even today you can legally exclude black people, women, disabled (not ablist speech here, using as a federally-protected class designation) etc. in a privately-owned, private business.

However, the second you run your privately-owned business as a public accomodation, you must allow ALL of the public, even the brown ones, access.

Rand is arguing that only government-funded institutions should have to accomodate black people.  Privately-owned businesses should just realize that racism isn’t economically advangtageous.  Very few businesses would then indulge themselves in racism, since it doesn’t make economic sense.

All evidence to the contrary, which as Amanda says is within his lifetime of experience, is ignored in favor of the ‘freedom’ to let businesses fuck people over.

As for his argument that it should all be local law and not federal?  It has to be a federal law as well, b/c, again, as we’ve seen in the past, when you allow racists to self-police their racism, somehow juries side with the racists.  Local enforcement is better for some things, but it doesn’t work when human rights are involved.

When a minority is in the minority, businesses don’t really take such a hit for behaving in a racist manner unless the minorities can sue for civil rights violations.  Then it becomes more expensive to be racist than to be fair, and enough more expensive that you risk bankruptcy by being racist in your business practices.

Rand is all for the free market, as long as it’s still gamed to favor the currently established power scheme.  Like the way his name and daddy’s fame and fortune have allowed him to run for office—that’s a perfectly acceptable ‘affirmative action’ policy. 

Fining/allowing suits against businesses that just don’t want to change their complexions? That’s an overreach.

I think Rand Paul’s very, very short political career might have just come to a screaming halt last night, barely 24 hours after a massive victory for his party’s nomination.

Most of the poll analysts seem to believe that the Maddow interview will turn what should have been a pretty easy victory for Dr. Paul into a too-close-to-call genuine race.  The fact that Kentucky is still a fairly conservative state is the only reason why he won’t bow out, because had he expressed his racist sentiments in most other states, he would already be toast.

I can’t really predict whether or not this will ultimately cost him the election (people have short memories, and 5 months is a lifetime in campaign politics), but I think if Conway (the Democratic nominee) was hoping for a good piece of dirt to help him win in a state that he probably wouldn’t have won otherwise, Rand Paul just gave it to him.

Naturally, the wingnut punditocracy is declaring Tuesday’s elections a huge win for conservatives, and they are pushing even harder the meme that they will take back 100 House seats plus majority control of the Senate.  However, there was one election Tuesday that wasn’t a party primary - the special election in Pennsylvania to fill the deceased John Murtha’s vacant seat.  And the Democrats won, despite the fact that Murtha’s district was the only district in the nation that President Obama didn’t win in 2008, but John Kerry did win in 2004.

As a matter of fact, I believe the Democrats have won 4 or 5 consecutive special elections to fill vacant House seats since the 2008 election, and the GOP has won zilch in that same span.  Convinced as they are that November will be this monumental victory for them, I think there’s a good chance the teabaggers emerge from the midterms looking like morons who don’t have a clue where America really is.  Simply due to the fact that the Democrats have a lot more seats to lose than do the Republicans, I’m inclined to believe that the GOP probably still walks away with a net gain in the elections, but I don’t think their victory is going to be anywhere near as big as they seem to think it will be.

Nancy Pelosi will still be the Speaker of the House in January, and she’ll probably have a caucus with 10-15 fewer members on the Democrats side, but that’s hardly a crushing defeat.

Harry Reid very likely will not be Senate Majority Leader after the midterms, though his replacement will almost certainly be a Democrat - most likely either Durbin or Schumer.  And the Democrats will still hold the majority, though it may be a majority of 54-56 seats as opposed to the 59 seats they currently have.

In any case, I have a hard time believing that the Republicans are going to see a repeat of 1994 like they seem to believe.  They’ll pick up some seats and make the Congressional Democrats jobs a little more difficult, but they still won’t be calling the shots.

I’ve said before the term “libertarian” needs to be taken back by liberals.  The so-called libertarianism is almost indistinguishable from authoritarianism in many aspects.  Instead of the government controlling things, they want big business to make the decisions through the fictional “free market.”  A business without government or union regulation is like a kingdom where only a few rich and elitist people pull the levers of power.  Liberals need to take back libertarianism because libertarian means the maximizing of freedom for the most number of people.  Rand Paul is no real libertarian.

@ DTG

Its actually 7 special election wins in a row for the Dems since 2008.

Ah, yes—the ‘if you didn’t force people to behave decently, they’d decide to do it on their own’ theory.  And liberals are supposed to be the naive little Pollyannas…

I can’t wait to get off this conference call so I can watch the video. Alas.

Regarding marching with MLK: In an increasingly secular society, we need to find analogues for our moral and philosophical ideologies to replace theological representations of those ideologies. As such, Hitler has become the stand-in for Satan. When you want to talk about pure, unadulterated evil, you whip out the Hitler card. By making Hitler the be-all and end-all of evil, we can position all other evil acts in relation to what he did. I would say Mother Theresa (though obviously not secular and incredibly problematic in her own way), is the popular Ultimate Standin For Good to replace Jesus/God.  MLK is quickly becoming a sort of stand-in for the concept of justice because most people believe that all he did was something about a bus boycott, then he made a lovely speech about people being free and equal, and then someone shot him. So most people are going to nod sagely and suggest that they, too, think such warm squishy thoughts, because no one is going to challenge them by talking about MLK’s views on things like Vietnam, communism, and affirmative action.

Saying you would have marched with MLK is quickly becoming a line similar to beauty pageant contestants saying that they want World Peace.

So, because one governmental policy is bad, we should scrap governmental regulation of commerce? Doesn’t compute.

That was an example of terrible regulation that in fact supports the massive corporations at the expense of small producers and, probably, the health of Americans.  It was meant to illustrate that not everyone who calls themselves a Libertarian is a closet racist who wants to return to the days of whites only lunch counters.  Not that we really have lunch counters any more, but still.

In my experience there are plenty of people who would describe themselves as Libertarian or Left-Libertarian who understand that institutional racism remains a problem, and regulations remain necessary to combat it.  Just because one has a preference for minimal or no regulation doesn’t mean one is an ideologue who wants to destroy all governmental regulations immediately.  That camp would best be described as idiot-libertarians.

@caren 9

I agree with the first part of your post.  Not sure what you want me to say about the second half.

The election of Brown (R) in MA was a special election; so they got one.

“Liberals need to take back libertarianism because libertarian means the maximizing of freedom for the most number of people.  Rand Paul is no real libertarian. “

I bet you’re right about Paul, he is a politician and probably will bend his principles to try to win election.  Libertarians and classical liberals have been saying for a long time that they should take back the term “liberal,” which used to mean freedom loving, but now is somewhat more authoritarian than that.

Oops… posted too soon.  We should probably not expect this to backfire, because libertarians (and conservatives) generally appeal to the vanity of their potential voters.  They don’t consider themselves racist—a) many actually are and b) they only consider it a bad thing because liberals successfully changed societal expectations—and most quite sincerely believe that they of course wouldn’t be such terrible, terrible people even if racist assumptions and policies were allowed.  It’s a crock, of course, but don’t ever assume that these people are self-aware and honest enough to recognize that they would be much, much worse without the evil liberal/statist coercion.  Inflated self-regard is the core character trait of the right.

@ Helen

My bad.  I meant 7 special house elections in a row.

Albert Cirrus—there’s nothing to take back. Libertarianism was never ours to begin with. It’s a sleight-of-hand trick that the right wing pulled to sucker Americans into reactionary politics by making it sound like they were pro-liberty.

It would be like if I started a “Freedomist” movement and told people that my platform was pro adorable basket of puppies, but in fact I was pursuing an agenda that aggressively fed kittens into woodchippers. I’m sure there are people that would sign on because they really hate cats, but most people are going to declare that they are pro puppy and that my feeding kittens into woodchippers is some sort of perversion of the original Freedomist philopsophy, when really, the slaughter of cats was baked into the Freedomist agenda from the beginning.

Fortunately, that is not what I said.  I said that it is not racist to argue that others should be allowed to make that decision.  It is racist to decide not to let someone in based on their race.

Actually, if you defend the rights of people to shut out other people in private places and shut them out of jobs on the basis of their race, then you are a racist. It’s as simple as that, and that is what the American South (and many parts of the north) looked like. If you are going to announce that you want a legal system to support and defend that kind of thing (once again, no-blacks-allowed diner counters depend on the willingness of the government to arrest and shoot any blacks who sit there to defend the “rights” of the racists), then it’s clear you celebrate racism.

Another thing, we had this discussion a few weeks ago about “JAQing off.”  Rand Paul JAQed off so much in that interview, the Civil Rights Act should be beyond question and it’s sad we are still having this debate today.

*sigh*

Racism does make economic sense if you are marketing your good or service as a positional good.  And for plenty of service providers, discrimination on the basis of race/gender/age/class is the easiest and cheapest way to charge monopoly rents.  Think exclusive golf clubs.  Moreover, you don’t have to be as obnoxious as those guys are, just admit a few “unsavories” who otherwise really fit the bill and use filters that does most of the job anyways.

Not that racist businesses and neighborhoods don’t have plenty of pseudolegal mechanisms with which to maintain their preferences.

“Actually, if you defend the rights of people to shut out other people in private places and shut them out of jobs on the basis of their race, then you are a racist. “

Do you defend the right of free speech for racists?  Does that make you a racist yourself?

Funny, I felt the same way Amanda.  In fact, I shut MSNBC off last evening, after watching KO’s interview with Robert Redford.  I even bitched to my by, wtf does she always have to play nice with these incredible assholes for?  You know, I’m not even watching this! 

Well, there is a reason Rachel Maddow is a Rhodes Scholar and I’m not.

To be fair, the Libertarian view rose to prominence during the era of a lot of other regulations as well. 

Sure, there’s a lot of classism and sexism inherent to it, as well.  Anti-environmentalism, too.  It is true that libertarianism rose in response to all sorts of social justice movements, but that someone is sexist and classist doesn’t prevent them from being motivated by racism, too.

Do you defend the right of free speech for racists?  Does that make you a racist yourself?

Yes, because saying mean racist things is exactly the same thing as denying employment or services. It’s just like how saying someone sucks and is a moron = killing that person.

Is there ANY part of your world that bears even the most glancing resemblance to the real one?

anoNY, it’s like this: a black guy comes to a lunch counter, wanting to be served a meal like everyone else. The racist owner calls the police. You are a policeman with a gun. If you follow the demands of the business owner to arrest or shoot the black man for refusing to obey the business owner’s right to discriminate in a public place, then you are a racist.

At the end of the day, segregation depends on business owners using the force if the government to
kill people to enforce their racist beliefs, and it depended on a lot of other racists who celebrated the power of business owners to use force and violence to maintain a racist economic system.

I’ve said before the term “libertarian” needs to be taken back by liberals. 

Why?  I don’t see the point in trying to redefine something away from the commonly held perception of what it is.  That’s a lot of effort and towards what?  They people who hold anti-social justice views at best will change what they call themselves.  Who cares what the word they use for themselves is?  The point isn’t the letters of a signifier, but what it means.  We need a word to describe this particular excuse-mongering for what amounts to neo-feudalism.  “Libertarian” is that word now, so why not just use it?  The people who need to back off are liberals who want to call themselves libertarians and then throw a hissy fit because 95% of people don’t agree with a definition that 5% of people prefer.

I think there’s a good chance the teabaggers emerge from the midterms looking like morons who don’t have a clue where America really is.

Most people aren’t political wonks—despite the fact FOX is the largest cable news network, most people in the country don’t watch it.  Around 90% of the country doesn’t watch the news at all.  The MSM has this ready-made story of Teabaggers Taking Back Their Country…but it’s not showing up in reality.  What will they do?

I’m looking forward to the spin, but, again, most people won’t watch that either. 

@anoNY—all of my post says the same thing: it’s racist for a business to discriminate on race.  It’s legal if they run a private club type deal, but the second they admit the public, they have to admit ALL of the public by federal law.

Rand thinks that’s a bad policy and that ONLY government run services or businesses that accept federal funds should have to follow those policies.  Everything else should be regulated, if at all, only by local legislation.

Because the free market will prevent racists from being racist.  Because the free market and lack of federal protections worked so well in the past—a past within his lifetime.

I do not believe Rand is that naive or stupid.  I believe he’s a racist.  The libertarian spin is just that—libertarian sprinkles on top of a racist sundae.

“Yes, because saying mean racist things is exactly the same thing as denying employment or services. It’s just like how saying someone sucks and is a moron = killing that person. “

Ah, Well What is back!  In the same vein of sarcasm: because defending the rights of all people (including racists) to exclude others is exactly the same thing as denying black people entry into my own store.

Yeah they all would have marched with MLK Jr. if only they had the chance.

His father, who also “isn’t a racist” had the chance.  Did he march?  You know, they are all so full of shit.  None of them are sexists either.  I swear the only people who buy their bullshit are white men.

Saying you would have marched with MLK is quickly becoming a line similar to beauty pageant contestants saying that they want World Peace.

During his lifetime, the people who call themselves libertarians now lambasted MLK as a socialist.  It wasn’t just the support for the Civil Rights Act, either.  What really drove them around the bend was his anti-poverty work.

anynY at #32 - yeah, it pretty much is.

and only white guys who harbor racist views can’t see that.

@29

“You are a policeman with a gun. If you follow the demands of the business owner to arrest or shoot the black man for refusing to obey the business owner’s right to discriminate in a public place, then you are a racist. “

You arrest the man for trespassing, just like we do today for trespassers.  If a black man is in a racist’s house and the racist calls the police, we do not accuse the policeman of being racist for removing or arresting the black man, do we?

anoNY, you either are a racist or you’re being a toady/useful idiot for racists. This is a country where in some regions, the entire economic system was based upon racial exclusion. What are we supposed to think when in an earlier thelread you point blank said that the absolute rights of property owners was paramount, no matter what they did to others? We have to assume that you’re ready to pull the trigger to shoot blacks at the lunch counter on behalf of racist property owners.

stop feeding the troll.

anonNY, you’re just really proving my point.  “Libertarianism” is and always was a cover for—-like Tyro noted—-a belief that government force should be used in service of a racist, sexist, classist agenda.  It’s funny that people take liberatarian claims to be anti-government seriously, since most libertarians support the government’s right to strong arm on property rights.  Libertarianism is functionally a philosophy about how the government’s sole purpose should be the protection and maintenance of strict social hierarchies, and violations of “liberty” only come into play when they intrude on those social hierarchies.  In other words, it’s neo-feudalism.

“Because the free market will prevent racists from being racist. “

The free market will not prevent racists from being racist, but it will offer incentives to serve all.  Government regulation against discrimination doesn’t prevent racists from being racist, it just makes them serve anyone who comes in.

“What are we supposed to think when in an earlier thelread you point blank said that the absolute rights of property owners was paramount, no matter what they did to others?”

That is not what I said.  The response to trespassing is to call the police, not to shoot the trespasser.  The property owner would have the right to throw the person off his property, as he does now, but not to shoot the trespasser!

Like I said earlier, I bet you could come up with a libertarian defense of slavery and sell it in a minute.  If you could create the illusion of any social support for it, then it would take off like wildfire.  Before too long, you’d have Rachel Maddow exposing some teabagger as someone who thinks there’s a decent property rights argument for why it was anti-liberty to ban slavery.

This whole “what if the Civil Rights Act were reversed” discussion is a bit naive, considering that we’ve reaped the benefits of the attitudinal adjustments it’s fostered for a generation and a half. “Why, no store owners would do that NOW!” is not really an argument, considering that the now has been influenced by the gradual (but not complete) disappearance of Jim Crow laws. I shudder to think that such glibertarian fantasists actually claim to study history.

BTW, The freedom of association thing was rejected 45 years ago, and it still allows for private clubs, private fantasy football leagues, private pick-up games on the basketball court, etc. to be segregated. I don’t know if that makes it good precedent in conservative (Bork) or glibertarian (Paul) eyes, but I don’t expect much in legal analysis from those camps anyway.

Also, well done, Tyro.  You should stand in for Rachel Maddow some time, and get a teabagger candidate to admit he still thinks the police should be on stand-by to shoot black people for protesting segregation once he achieves a repeal of the CRA.

“a belief that government force should be used in service of a racist, sexist, classist agenda”

The government even now serves racists, it protects them with police and fire services, it lets them use the roads, etc.  The government should serve all people, racist or not.  Libertarians are fundamentally anti-BIG-government, not always anti-government.  Those who are anti-government are called anarchists.

And when that happens, I’ll bet his defenders will say that he’s not a racist, because he supporters shooting ALL protesters of segregation.

Aw, the troll is scrambling to recover from admitting that libertarian opposition to government is only an inch deep, and in fact libertarians are all for a strong government if it’s enforcing racist policies.

@ Amanda

“Like I said earlier, I bet you could come up with a libertarian defense of slavery and sell it in a minute.”

My god, when will you get off that?  You must think that repetition will allow it to come true or something.

racist speech must be tolerated in a free society; racist *actions* and *policies*, no.

if you tolerate racist policies, public or private, in defense of property rights, you are *de facto* a racist.

*de facto* racist anoNY is just hoping everyone takes his claims to *de jure* non-racism as meaningful; problem is, the rest of live in the real world, not in some perpetual high school debate-team competition

anoNY, your apparent argument (and Paul’s as well, I guess) that there’s some intolerable tension between allowing freedom of speech, on the one hand, while outlawing freedom to practice private business discrimination on racial grounds, on the other, is complete BS.  The rationale for unfettered freedom of speech depends largely on the fact that speech is powerful ONLY when it’s persuasive and can lead to private or public action.  Society doesn’t have to fear hateful, unpopular speech because unpopular speech doesn’t have any significant effect on society as a whole (of course, even unpopular hateful speech can have negative immediate social consequences, but in America we’ve decided that tolerating those is worth it for truly free speech).  Racist speech, without discriminatory public and/or private strictures to back it up, ultimately becomes just a bunch of hateful assholes griping to each other.

Private or local business conduct is another matter entirely: it is quite possible to establish a dominant, static and self-replicating racist culture based on endemic private, local discrimination.  This is especially true when you realize that Paul’s critique of the Civil Rights laws must extend not just to the “freedom” of restaurants to refuse black patrons, but also their “freedom” to refuse to hire black waitresses, or their “freedom” to pay black employees 1/2 of what they pay whites.  That’s an excellent way to create a culture like Alabama in the 1960s, and it’s why the Civil Rights Act was passed in the first place.  Contrary to conservative/libertarian myth, Democrats in the 1960s—led by LBJ, for christ’s sake!—were not crypto-marxist hippies who passed the Civil Rights Act because they loved squashing the freedoms of white small businessmen.  They passed it because they realized that the only way you really solve segregation is by . . . outlawing segregation.

You might think the statement “I’m not a racist, I just oppose fighting private racism,” is meaningful.  As a matter of public policy, it’s not.

Why should I get off it, anonNY?  Do I have an obligation to help you not keep digging yourself into a deeper hole?

it’s no accident, btw, that neo-confederates tend to be libertarians, too

libertarianism allows one to pretend that the Civil War was truly about “state’s rights” and not slavery, ignoring the historical evidence (i.e., that pesky little critter reality again)

“Rand is all for the free market, as long as it’s still gamed to favor the currently established power scheme.”

Very insightful, but replace “Rand” with “Libertarians”. For all their talk, they’re a purely regressive movement that wants to roll back reforms, nothing more.

Do I have an obligation to help you not keep digging yourself into a deeper hole?

Yes! Because lord knows that kid’s mental house of cards is wobbly enough without you holding a hair dryer to it.

#48

“Like I said earlier, I bet you could come up with a libertarian defense of slavery and sell it in a minute.”

My god, when will you get off that?  You must think that repetition will allow it to come true or something.

(Clears throat.)

“Do I have an obligation to help you not keep digging yourself into a deeper hole?”

I think, as good Pandagonians, we all have an obligation to help assNY dig as deep a hole as necessary…

...until it collapses on top of him…

DTG@10
Don’t be so sure that Paul would have coasted to victory in this race even before last night’s blow-up.  Dems in KY hold approximately a 2 to 1 voter registration in the state.  Conway IS a native son (even if he did go to Duke for his undergrad degree) and is the current AG.

Plus don’t be surprised if a lot more of Grayson voters turn around and vote for Conway than Mongiardo voters decide to go for Paul

For those sticklers to detail, anonNY, Rand Paul is not necessarily a racist and would not necessarily have liked segregation (or slavery), he just wouldn’t have done anything concrete to end it. Government action is what ended segregation (and slavery before it). There had been private action for long periods of time to try to end it, but that did NOT work (do you think people only started working against segregation in the 1950s). That’s the problem with libertarian philosophy in general, when a problem comes up they have a stock answer that has NOT worked when the problem actually happened in practice (so, for example, what would you do if corporations became monopolies?) and they ignore the history (most state’s rights people WERE racist, so it’s not a terrible assumption to believe that a person arguing for state’s rights is racist).

So, anonNY, here’s the completely factual statement about Paul: if segregation had continued until today in the south without the government’s action, he would not believe the federal government should do anything to end it. In that sense, he is fine with segregation (and slavery).

I can’t take full credit for my point that “allowing segregation” is actually “using the government to enforce segregation.” It gets back to a point that the (libertarian) writer PJ O’Rourke made in Parliament of Whore: if you support a government program, you have to pay with it with taxes. If you don’t pay your taxes, you go to jail. If you try to escape from jail, you get shot. So, O’Rourke made the (glib) argument that if you support a government program, would you be willing to shoot grandma to pay for it. But it actually applies to all sorts of things: the reason the government regulates what kind of contracts you can make is if you break a contract, the other party can tale you to court. If you lose the case, the court can order your assets confiscated. To get your assets, the government needs to be the one to take them from you to enforce the court order. So the government has an interest in what contracts it is or isn’t willing to enforce. So it is with segregation in public businesses. Is the state going to use violence to enforce what libertarians believe are the inalienable rights of business owners to segregate, discriminate, endanger their workers, etc.? Libertarians say yes, because property rights are more important to them than human dignity.

Ah yes, I forgot to add in Tyro’s point to my factual statement: and Paul would be fine with the governement helping to enforce the segregation of any and all private businesses.

What Amanda said in 39.

“Libertarianism is functionally a philosophy about how the government’s sole purpose should be the protection and maintenance of strict social hierarchies, and violations of “liberty” only come into play when they intrude on those social hierarchies.  In other words, it’s neo-feudalism. “

The only way for such libertarianism to “work” is to actually reduce the protections that we give to existing power structures. In Tyro’s case given, the “trespasser” when the cops are called, the cops should react with a shrug and a dispensation to work it out between the parties. So in such a way, the people without the power behind them actually have power to affect direct change.

Likewise, think of environmentalism. If we’re going to respect the liberty of all parties, then say you own a factory, and the pollution is coming into my home. I can order you to stop polluting, until you can guarantee that it will not affect my home. That’s easy. But very few libertarians would advocate this.

It really is about maintaining and strengthening existing power structures. It’s beyond racism, really.

And for what it’s worth, “left-libertarians” tend to be anarchists who also think that the idea of land ownership is a serious infringement of individual liberty.

stop feeding the troll.

I actually think useful idiots like anoNY serve a purpose—they put out “reasonable sounding” talking points thoughtfully crafted by the Koch family wingnut welfare orgs, and we demonstrate how spurious and intellectually dishonest they are.

Do you defend the right of free speech for racists?  Does that make you a racist yourself?

You illustrate here a core American Libertarian (i.e. Rotatian Socialist) misunderstanding of the First Amendment. Speech != commerce, even if the “person” engaging in speech is a corporate person. In other words, the First Amendment wasn’t put in place primarily so publishers like Ben Franklin could make money.

Open markets are ensured (to a an extremely generous degree in comparison to other countries) by other law. And public accommodation is one of those laws: not a public accommodation? you’re allowed to be a racist when it comes to your patrons; otherwise, you’re breaking the law. The government does this not to save business owners from making poor decisions, but to ensure that citizens are treated equally. And they do it with a light hand, making specific exceptions for private accommodations.

Racist Libertarians like Rand Paul aren’t satisfied with that, of course. And the reason is, they’re pandering to other racists, e.g. Southerners who are still outraged they have to sit next to n*ggers at lunch counters. Rand Paul allow those those racists to say “oh, no, we’re not upset by black people, we’re upset that the big bad government is throttling the free expression of private businesses.”

Libertarianism of Paul’s variety can serve a racist agenda very well, especially for a politician pandering to racists. In the old days, the “respectable” face of racism was “states’ rights.” Today, it’s freedom of speech for poor beleagured corporations. That’s right, AnoNY: you’re defending a modern-day version of George Wallace ca. 1963.

You arrest the man for trespassing, just like we do today for trespassers.  If a black man is in a racist’s house and the racist calls the police, we do not accuse the policeman of being racist for removing or arresting the black man, do we?

No-one here is talking about an individual in a private home. We’re talking about businesses subject to public accommodation laws. The officer in the scenario is presented by the business owner with a demand to violate the law himself: ejecting a person from the public premises because he’s African-American. If the officer chooses to violate the law by acceding to the business owner’s demands, or if he accepts a clearly fallacious pretext for a trespassing charge, he has made a consciously racist choice.

Read up on the Nashville lunch counter sit-ins to see this sort of thing in action. Rand Paul and those to whom he panders likely still believe the outcome of this protest, and others like them, were a terrible injustice—and I assure you, it’s not because it was a violation of “states’ rights” or “property rights.”

Typo: “Rotatian Socialist” should read “Rotarian Socialist”

Do you defend the right of free speech for racists?

I defend their right to march in the streets… and the right of the ARA and assorted antifas to smash their faces in when they do.

Fuck Nazi sympathy.

Reason #1,425 why 99% of libertarians are straight, white, male, and economically well off.

The First Amendment was made to protect political speech, NOT commercial speech, the latter which just barely existed at the time of the American Revolution and had nowhere near the kind of power and presence it does today.

Hmmm, I’ve known some people with these views, and I wouldn’t call most of them racist, I’d just say that they are ignorant of the way that racism works.

I’m thinking of the nerd-libertarian types.

They think, for example, that a free market assures you that racism will get wiped out, because the company that hires based on race and not on qualifications will do worse than the companies that ignore race.

Unfortunately, the world is more complicated than that, because people need to work together.  If I have a work force that is largely white, and, say, 20% of them are racist, then hiring a black person will make him less effective and make his racist coworkers less effective.  So, even if the black person is technically more qualified for the job, a manager could make a rational market decision to not hire him/her.

Essentially, racism is a stable system, and it rewards people who act racist even when they themselves are not racist.  It is also a non-optimal system, in that productivity is ultimately hurt.

It is also, of course, a horribly unjust system.  The stability, the unjustness, and the financial cost of racism all argue for government intervention.

The First Amendment was made to protect political speech, NOT commercial speech, the latter which just barely existed at the time of the American Revolution and had nowhere near the kind of power and presence it does today.

If you want to go to core motivations, it’s this: most Libertarians (i.e. your definition of straight, white, male, and economically well off) have convinced themselves that everything is an economic transaction, to an almost Marxist degree. That not only includes speech and expression, but also sex and relationships—which is why you so a lot of cross-over with MRAs and PUAs and evo-psych cranks.

In some ways, they’re even more happy when the transaction approaches zero-sum, because they’re all about pulling one over on someone else. That’s how Randians and other atheist Libertarians can accept the organised religion scam—the suckers deserve it, after all (more so if the marks aren’t professional white males like themselves or the con-men who usually run these rackets).

Rand is in deep trouble. He should have just come right out with a direct defense of his views. Instead, he weaseled and tried to deflect and acted all politician-ish. The upshot is that liberals still won’t vote for him, and he reduces his street cred with the tea partiers.

All this tells me that Rand knows full well that his movement is unacceptably racist. If he were naive enough to believe that racism isn’t part of it, he would have made the straightforward case for his views

@55

The money quote:

“The comparable question about an individual is whether a free system will allow him to sell himself into slavery.”

Why?  I don’t see the point in trying to redefine something away from the commonly held perception of what it is.  That’s a lot of effort and towards what?

Well, that IS basically the method the right wing used to make Liberal and Democrat into dirty words.  Unless your point is that smearing a word is easy but rehabilitating a word is impossible.

@58

“So, anonNY, here’s the completely factual statement about Paul: if segregation had continued until today in the south without the government’s action, he would not believe the federal government should do anything to end it. In that sense, he is fine with segregation (and slavery). “

If you are talking about private segregation, yes.  Government-sponsored segregation would have to go, though.  Slavery, on the other hand, is a different question.  Individual freedom applies to all, regardless of color, so slavery would not be legal.

Just remember in Libertarian society, property rights trump personal rights.
So if a parent were to sell their children to a company, because having not reached their majority a minor is the ward (property) of their parents.
Having bought the child and provided the resources for the child to grow to its majority the company can now claim the person as their property.

Not to say this person is a *slave* rather he/she is an indentured servant.  But truthfully they are property.

This isn’t brain surgery, these are arguments used repeatedly by slave holder before it was abolished.

Crap, atheist beat me to it.

Once you incorporate a business you no longer get to claim any sort of relationship to Libertarianism. You are accepting certain rights and immunities from the government in exchange for obeying certain constraints on your business’s actions. Claiming otherwise is simply a childish desire to get something for nothing.

Since I am, philosophically, pretty much a Syndicalist I’m kind of hip to stripping corporate rights away. Of course in my free-market utopia if you refused to serve black folks then the One Big Union would make damn sure you do that all by your lonesome, without access to the labor pool… including police and firemen.

“Libertarians say yes, because property rights are more important to them than human dignity.”

When a person trespasses, he is pissing on the human dignity of the property owner.  You keep mentioning this human dignity without examining that of the property owner.

“No-one here is talking about an individual in a private home. We’re talking about businesses subject to public accommodation laws.”

No, they are talking about how someone’s human dignity trumps another person’s property rights on that person’s property.  This is not about what the law currently says.  I am suggesting that private businesses be treated like private homes under the law, so quoting what the law currently says is irrelevant.

In a slight (very slight) defense of some libertarians, many of them are just really naive about the way the world works. I understand it. 20 years ago, I honestly believed that if people had all the information I had, they would make decisions I would support. For example, I believed that if people and corporations truly understood the environmental implications of their actions, they wouldn’t pollute. I thought it was possible to fight polluters with information.

Obviously, it didn’t work out that way. But still, it took multiple doses of reality to get me to my liberal self.

Which is why it’s awesome that Amanda et al take on the libertarians like anoNY. Some of them are just really naive, and they can learn.

REALLY. Trespassing is an affront to human dignity. Because dignity is inherent in property, not humanity, dontchaknow. Ooooh boy, son, I don’t know if you wanna go that route out loud, yeah? That road goes some ugly places.

If you want to go to core motivations, it’s this: most Libertarians (i.e. your definition of straight, white, male, and economically well off) have convinced themselves that everything is an economic transaction, to an almost Marxist degree.

Yup, they’re the Marxists of the right. And just like when you point out the the failure of the Soviet Union, or the horrors of Maoist China to Marxists and they claim that wasn’t REAL TROO Marxism, when you point out the horrors of the Gilded Age to a libertarian they’ll scream that wasn’t REAL TROO capitalism.

@73

Another straw man.  You are certainly correct that what you wrote wasn’t “brain surgery,” it wasn’t even factually correct.

Ah, there you go anonNY, you are fine with segregation the way it was in 1960. Good to know.

“REALLY. Trespassing is an affront to human dignity. Because dignity is inherent in property, not humanity, dontchaknow. Ooooh boy, son, I don’t know if you wanna go that route out loud, yeah? That road goes some ugly places. “

You are sure that someone entering your house without your permission is not an affront to your dignity?

Oh, and to be clear, not all libertarians are naive. Some of them are just assholes.

“Ah, there you go anonNY, you are fine with segregation the way it was in 1960. Good to know.” 

I am not fine with segregation, I would not refuse to serve people based on their skin color, nor would I patronize a business that would.  However, if a business owner decided not to serve people based on their skin color, I would realize that it was his or her decision to do so and I would not get the government involved in changing his or her mind.

“Individual freedom applies to all, regardless of color, so slavery would not be legal.”

...but denying someone the right to use your service or buy your product based on the person’s genetic/cultural/religious/gender background is perfectly fine.  So believing in “individual freedom” doesn’t mean any given individual actually has “freedom” in actual practice, right?

I’m sure that Adolph Hitler would say, were he still around, “I like your philosophy and would like to subscribe to your newsletter…”

As someone told you in another thread, may the FSM have mercy on your soul… 
...‘cause you won’t find any here…

Didn’t John McCain say that he was against pay discrimination but did not support the Lilly Ledbetter law? How does discrimination ever go away? Fucking magnets? This propertarian troll would have been morally against slavery but would have no choice but to oppose the government stealing legal property.

Also, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 does not extend to non-public accommodations because it is based on the Interstate Commerce powers of Congress. The Civil Rights Act of 1875 was based on the 14th Amendment, but was overturned by that era’s conservative judicial activists and upheld by our own era’s conservative judicial activists. Originalism is another fake principle that they hide behind.

Modern day libertarians are just parasites on the civil and worker rights victories of the past. They are able to claim that the consequences of their beliefs won’t be that bad only because we eliminated the abuses of libertarians through the force of law in the past.

Because there is no more legalized, enforced segregation, anoNY doesn’t have to look anyone in the eye and tell them that they have to suffer for his beliefs. Without the civil rights act, anoNY’s behavior would be unacceptable in polite company outside of the offices of the national review.

No, they are talking about how someone’s human dignity trumps another person’s property rights on that person’s property.

Exactly. What do you think those public accommodation laws are for? To save some idiot lunch-counter owner from bad business decisions based on racism that makes him deny himself a portion of the market?

I am suggesting that private businesses be treated like private homes under the law, so quoting what the law currently says is irrelevant.

So you’re all for no health-code enforcement at restaurants, are you? That’s part of public accommodation law, too, and those “intrusive” health and safety regs are in place for the same reason non-discrimination regs are—to protect all citizens availing themselves of a public accommodation equally. The boldface indicate the part the Paul’s followers have a problem with.

I have said before that I felt Libertarians constituted a reasonable counter to the potential excesses of Liberalism, whereas Republicans (being in thrall to religious fundamentalism) were incapable of honest argumentation.

AnoNypus is starting to make me wonder if I was mistaken about the Libertarians.

@ DTG

Its actually 7 special election wins in a row for the Dems since 2008.

It wasn’t a special election, but the Republicans did pick up one House seat after the federal elections of November 2008.  Joseph Cao defeated William Jefferson in LA-02 (the district that represents New Orleans) in a December 2008 run-off, though Cao’s victory is almost certainly attributable to the legal problems Jefferson brought on himself prior to the election.  Those legal problems ultimately led to Jefferson not only losing his Congressional seat, but also being sentenced to 13 years in federal prison on bribery charges.

LA-02 is considered one of the most heavily Democratic-leaning districts in the country, so Cao will probably see his Congressional career come to an end in the midterms.  The only reason Cao won in the first place is because his opponent was a bonafide criminal, and the local Democratic Party failed to primary Jefferson out before the general election.  They stupidly assumed that the district was so reliably Democratic that there was no chance Jeffeson could lose, even with serious corruption charges hanging over him going into the election.  They were wrong.  On the upside, a new, hopefully non-corrupt Democrat will most likely be taking that seat back this November.

I would not refuse to serve people based on their skin color

But of course you would. You would recognize the rights of the property owner to give you a lease for the business space telling you that you could only serve whites, and you would realize that your profit-maximizing strategy would be to stay in the good graces of other racist business owners by having a segregated business, and you’d call the police and press charges on any blacks who demanded that they be served in a public place, just like everyone else. And if they refuse to leave or crowded into your store, you’d demand that the authorities start shooting in order ensure that they follow your demands. all because you want money and demand that people do as you say when you say it. And you would oppose and condemn anyone who would dare claim that such behavior from business owners be illegal.

But the truth is that you don’t have to look someone in the face and tell him that going to a diner and ordering a coffee at the counter is a crime because there are civil rights laws that prevent segregation.

However, if a business owner decided not to serve people based on their skin color, I would realize that it was his or her decision to do so and I would not get the government involved in changing his or her mind.

See, we get that.  We’ve gotten it from your first post.

What we’re telling you, is that that belief is fucking racist.  And unacceptable in American society.  So unacceptable that we have laws forbidding it.

DTG I agree with your electoral predictions, especially with the economy improving faster than expected. We’re way ahead of schedule for job creation vs. the Bush “recovery”, this will not be a jobless one. That combined with the Republicans going full wingnut means its going to be an anticlimactic election.

#91

I have said before that I felt Libertarians constituted a reasonable counter to the potential excesses of Liberalism, whereas Republicans (being in thrall to religious fundamentalism) were incapable of honest argumentation.

Actually, xebecs, I prefer the Fundamentalist Christians. Their worldview makes more sense. (Compared to the Libertarians, that is.)

And you can at least find some conservative Christians who care about the environment and poverty, even if their “solutions” are assbackward they at least admit there’s a problem.

Ben D., yeah. It’s a bit of a Dracula vs. Frankenstein sort of comparison, though.

You are sure that someone entering your house without your permission is not an affront to your dignity?

Yes. It’s an affront to my property, and certainly to good civil order, but not to my dignity. My dignity is intrinsic to being an autonomous human, not to controlling my own personal castle. If I own no property, I still possess dignity. If I lose my property, I still possess dignity.

So you’re all for no health-code enforcement at restaurants, are you?.

And, following logically, he’s for eradicating limited liability, corporate personhood, shared ownership and perpetual lifetime for businesses.

If not, it’s like I said: they want something for nothing. If so, he’s suggesting we burn the west’s economic system to the ground.

atheist@96:  But you *did* see the rest of my comment, right?

@93

You are assuming that all property owners would be racist and that all other businesses would be racist.

“But the truth is that you don’t have to look someone in the face and tell him that going to a diner and ordering a coffee at the counter is a crime because there are civil rights laws that prevent segregation. “

It would only be a crime if he refused to leave when asked.  It would be trespassing.

Does libertarianism lead to slavery?  It’s an interesting question, and the answer—-if you look at slavery in the modern world—-is yes.  There are 27 million people enslaved, and the reason that slave holders get away with it is they work in political systems that fit libertarian demands—-no labor regulations, basically.  So, whether any individual libertarian claims that they don’t support slavery is irrelevant.  If we had the government they demand, slavery would flourish.  And I imagine many libertarians would claim that it’s not our business to interfere if someone signs a contract that led them down a path that is slavery.

“My dignity is intrinsic to being an autonomous human, not to controlling my own personal castle.”

Are you really autonomous if you have no control over your personal property?  Someone wants to force a business owner to serve them against his will, this is an affront to the owner’s dignity.

If not, it’s like I said: they want something for nothing. If so, he’s suggesting we burn the west’s economic system to the ground.

Pretty much. I’m fond of noting how ignorant Libertarians are of Robert Heinlein’s TANSTAAFL dictum.

Does libertarianism lead to slavery?  It’s an interesting question, and the answer—-if you look at slavery in the modern world—-is yes.

Taken its logical conclusion, of course. You get a neo-feudal warlord society run by thugs. AnoNY and other debate-club nerd Libertarians would be dogmeat if their dream society came to pass.

Individual freedom applies to all, regardless of color, so slavery would not be legal.

Bullshit.  The libertarian mentality may argue that individual freedom applies to all who are full human beings, but your ideological forefathers in the 1800s didn’t seem to be willing to accept the notion that African-Americans were in fact full human beings.  I believe they were considered 3/5 of a person.

Had slavery not been abolished, you would be arguing right now that African-Americans don’t deserve the same liberties as their white counterparts, because you would claim that an African-American isn’t actually a full human being worthy of the level of respect you would expect for your fellow white citizens.

Seriously, go fuck yourself.

Slavery would not have ended had we left it up to the Confederate plantation-owning shitbags to work it out on their own.  Jim Crow laws would not have been eliminated if we had depended upon the non-existent “invisible hand” to resolve the matter.

These basic rights were only obtained by force of the government essentially telling the racists, “you are free to hold as hateful and as bigoted beliefs as you want, but we will no longer allow you to carry out your racist beliefs in a way that will substantively harm an entire class of people.”

And if you don’t think slavery is possible in the world in the 21st Century, look to Nike and Walmart and any number of Fortune 500 companies and the sweatshops that they run on shoestring budgets by exploiting desperate indigent workers to get the most out of them while paying them the absolute least amount of money imagineable.

Of course, I can see anonNY’s argument in this case: “Look, I don’t approve of slave trafficking.  But if people don’t like it, they can refuse to buy products produced with slave labor.  That would work better than statist regulations of contracts and labor that allow people to be enslaved in the first place.”

anonNY, no matter how many times you rephrase it, we’re not going to not notice that you’re advocating that the police had a right and duty to shoot protesters who held sit-ins.

Another straw man.  You are certainly correct that what you wrote wasn’t “brain surgery,” it wasn’t even factually correct.

Comment #80: anoNY

Prove it.  First prove it’s a Strawman, you’ve already defended that property rights trump personal rights.

When a person trespasses, he is pissing on the human dignity of the property owner.  You keep mentioning this human dignity without examining that of the property owner.
Comment #75: anoNY

You are using the force of government to defend a property right over the human right to complete a legal commercial transaction.

And of course you don’t even try and answer the dilemma posed because it’s a logical extension of the human dignity of a property owner.
Sadly, examining the true *real world* uses for your fine, unsullied philosophy would mean admitting that you value the right of a person to own stuff is more important than a person to be free and unrestrained by the prejudices and systematic infringments of their rights by “Owners.”

Gracchus, anoNY isn’t someone like Douhat or some other troll with especially *interesting* ideas.  He just repeats a talking point.

So I guess you mutually benefit.  The troll gets his persecution jollies, while those of us who want to punch the troll digitally gets to have a maypole with which to eludicate a philosophy.

I just think Rand Paul is far more interesting to punch and not some little dude in some basement…

#101

atheist@96:  But you *did* see the rest of my comment, right?

Yes I did. I guess that means you and I are now on the same page, which is a good thing.

It’s worth noting that many to most libertarians that think having someone standing on your lawn without your permission is a huge invasion of their dignity think that forced childbirth is no big deal.

“Prove it.  First prove it’s a Strawman, you’ve already defended that property rights trump personal rights. “

I have said this multiple times, but here you go again:  Individual freedom, yes even for the child, trumps the parent’s ability to sell that child.  The child has rights and cannot be sold in that fashion.  Do I really have to spell that out?

Child = Human being

“You are using the force of government to defend a property right over the human right to complete a legal commercial transaction. “

Wait what?  Right to complete a transaction?  You mean the right to force another human being to engage in a commercial transaction with you?  Where did that right come from?

When a person trespasses, he is pissing on the human dignity of the property owner.

Let me get this straight… when an African-American family walks into a diner on a Sunday afternoon prepared to patronize that establishment with their business, they are “pissing on the human dignity” of the racist restaurant owner?

Are you fucking kidding, you racist?

The argument you are making is that SIMPLY BEING BLACK inside the restaurant of a racist constitutes “pissing on the human dignity” of the racist restaurant owner.  That’s pretty much the exact position that you just advocated.

Fuck you, you ignorant mouthbreathing hillbilly cracker.

Fetus != child.

Just like egg != chicken.

However, if a business owner decided not to serve people based on their skin color, I would realize that it was his or her decision to do so and I would not get the government involved in changing his or her mind.

If that is the result of “free markets,” then a lot of people are going to decide that free markets duck and shpuld be destroyed, and they’re going to think that when you preach values of “success through hard work in the free market,” you’re actually lying and don’t believe that stuff.

Your dream society can’t exist without a lot of people looking at the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence without thinking, “These people are lying through their teeth.”

A public business is a public business—it is a place where someone wishing to conduct business has a right to be there: by your logic, it is the business owner, who refuses to sell to blacks, who is the tresspasser: after all, the black customer is there for a peaceful commercial purpose, while the business owner appears to be the one interfering with commercial activities by turning the place into a place to threaten black customers. By no reasonable definition is the customer tresspassing. By any reasonable definition, you are demanding that your tax dollars be used too arrest, prosecute, or even kill people who don’t pass the “skin color test” if they want to buy a coffee. It’s hard to see how your specific advocacy of state-sponsored violence to enforce racial segregation is anything other than racist. If you’re there cheering on the police for arresting and beating someone in a public restaurant because you believe that this is a wonderful defense of the rights of businesses to enforce racial discrminilation, then it’s hard to see how you aren’t a racist: you’re paying for the police, the jails, the prosecutors, and the bullets.

Comment 117 was the result of having another abortion argument in an entirely different forum. Apologies.

In theory, libertarians should care about the environment.  When a business pollutes a river to avoid some extra costs, they are really just passing the costs of their production to the locals with no cost to themselves.

On the other hand, I haven’t met too many libertarians who are strong environmentalists, and they tend to be climate change deniers because the only realistic way to avoid climate change, if it is real, is through government power. (Climate change is a classic case of the “tragedy of the commons.”)

Would be edifying to see how these racist asshats would react to businesses restricting the rights of whites to use them. They’d squeal like stuck pigs.

Of course slavery exists today.  Human trafficking is a huge black market business worldwide, although I’ve also heard conservatives claim that the estimated number of victims is “exaggerated.”  So it’s yet another phenomenon that they want to deny even as it stares them in the face.

atheist@101: Well, I do know some Libertarian types who are very committed to progressive ideals, but feel that the government has a strong tendency to meddle in ways that actually HURT progressive causes.  Those are the kind of people I was really talking about.  It’s just that I’m starting to think they are really a tiny minority.

Are you really autonomous if you have no control over your personal property?

Well that depends—are we talking about no control ever, under any circumstances (i.e., not even permitted to acquire property in the first place, much less dispose of it as I wish) or no control under a limited circumstance (i.e., mostly I control my shit, but sometimes things are stolen/invaded).

A systemic denial of access to property or services strikes me as, yes, an affront to dignity and autonomy. Which, funny, is exactly what you think should become legal.

But do you really think that you become something less than human if someone steals your iPod? You remain sufficiently autonomous to a) pursue justice, and b) acquire a new fucking iPod.

But if even the most momentary infringement on Everything Just As I Like It In My Castle is a human rights abuse, it seems like you’re creating a fertile ground for the “Well, if people don’t own stuff then they aren’t really people anyway, so why does it matter?” argument.

Honestly I came into this thinking, anoNY is a moron, but probably not an (intentional) racist. Now I’m pretty sure that deep down you’re just a total fucking racist.

First prove it’s a Strawman, you’ve already defended that property rights trump personal rights.

I think he’s trying to claim that property rights are equal with personal rights. Which makes for quite a legal pickle when you’re talking about things like slavery or racial discrimination in public accomodations. Not to mention his own argument:

Individual freedom, yes even for the child, trumps the parent’s ability to sell that child.  The child has rights and cannot be sold in that fashion.  Do I really have to spell that out?

Child = Human being

So human rights do trump property rights, after all! How do you reconcile that view with your opposition to public accommodation laws?

I don’t know why I bother. AnoNY has now gone into the “avoiding uncomfortable questions” phase of the debate, so I’ll leave him to dine at Chez Salmonella as he dreams of a feudal wonderland.

@samp: Interestingly, that’s not entirely a hypothetical. There are some business, especially in immigrant communities, where the primary language used to conduct transactions is not English. Thus, someone who only speaks English is at a disadvantage when trying to patronise that business, even if they aren’t explicitly forbidden from entering, as was the case with the kind of racial segregation being discussed here.

Of course, the same people loudly crowing about the inalienable right of businesses to segregate are almost always anti-immigrant fucks who would say that not speaking English fluently is grounds for deportation, so yeah.

Yup, they’re the Marxists of the right. And just like when you point out the the failure of the Soviet Union, or the horrors of Maoist China to Marxists and they claim that wasn’t REAL TROO Marxism, when you point out the horrors of the Gilded Age to a libertarian they’ll scream that wasn’t REAL TROO capitalism.

Both Libertarians and Marxists both require the same thing in order for their ideal societies to work: humans not to act like humans.

The Libertarian Paradise require people so self-involved that they won’t willingly join a collective group in order to impose their collective will on others.  The Marxists/Communist Paradise require people who won’t manipulate the system in order to give themselves greater status.

Both systems might work on a small scale with a small group, but are impossible on the large scale because humans are social mammals with an inherent hierarchical instinct and an urge to cheat whenever they can get away with it.

xebecs@123:

Yes, I know some of those types as well. I simply accept that, for their own reasons, they are good people who believe some really crazy shit. My assessment of their goodness does not, however, extend to the stuff they believe. Especially because it is so potentially damaging.

anonNY, if a fetus is a person, then what is a protester that you’d have shot for trespassing during a sit-in? If the cops can shoot someone that stands on my lawn after I tell him to leave, then why can’t I eject a fetus from my uterus?

But see what I mean?  anonNY’s worldview reduces women’s bodies to below the level of protection he offers property.  To be property, women would actually be getting a promotion.  There’s your argument for slavery—-he’s already got a worldview where enslaving women is a promotion from subhuman to actual property.

I have said this multiple times, but here you go again:  Individual freedom, yes even for the child, trumps the parent’s ability to sell that child.  The child has rights and cannot be sold in that fashion.  Do I really have to spell that out?
Child = Human being

Comment #114: anoNY

Nope.  You have to actually educate yourself in economics and the ideals you are glibbly spouting off without reaching their conclusion.
Put down the Ayn Rand and pick up Adam Smith.
And try to read past the first 2 chapters.

Well, although I think anoNY is giving a stick a run for its money, it is amusing that the only defense for Rand Paul fails to do anything but be racist.  anoNY just gets in deeper the more it argues; i.e., clarifies that racism is the only justification.

I’m sure both anoNY and Rand have a black friend, though.  They might even let that friend use the bathroom in their houses without calling the cops because their dignity was insulted.

anonydouche,

Despite your constant “I’m not a racist, but…” caveat, you aren’t merely arguing in defense of the right of racists to hold racist viewpoints, you are arguing in defense of the right of racists to act out their racist beliefs by utilizing their businesses to inflict harm on the racial groups they despise.

The First Amendment protects our right to think, write, or speak beliefs which may be objectionable to others; what it does not do is give us the right to implement those beliefs into tangible actions which causes direct harm to others.

I’m free to express my opinion that Johnny sucks and I hope he gets hit by a car.  I am not free to take my car out to run Johnny down simply because I believe that’s what he deserves.  And the fact that I am not legally allowed to act out my hateful desire against Johnny in no way, shape, or form is an infringement of my First Amendment rights.

The fundamental problem I have with Libertarianism is that it is perhaps the most arrogantly selfish political ideology ever imagined, and given the time and space to play itself out to its logical conclusion, it will always result in a third world society that is defined by the mantra “might makes right”.

You want to live in a real Libertarian paradise?  I suggest Somalia - it is absolutely one of the most Libertarian countries on this planet.  The state pretty much controls nothing, and every citizen is basically free to hoard as much property as they are capable of hoarding, by any means available to them - usually a well-stocked arsenal of guns and ammo.  You just need to figure out how to get in good with the vicious warlords, and you’re all set.

@Joshua N. your analogy is partially apt, but of course the usual stance of people who run such businesses is that they are thrilled that us non-Spanish/Hindi…. folks are interested in visiting their establishment and giving them money even if our monolingualism is inconvenient for all involved.

As many others have pointed out far better than I, I think the core problem here is one of entitlement. The Rand Pauls of the world see others trying to just get a fair shake as an attack on their own entitlements. Of course they view their own entitlements as being somehow virtuous and God-given and therefore not entitlements at all, but the rest of us know better.

AnonNY’s view sadly misses large areas of economics that were established earlier in the thread.
Such as market’s natural movement to monopolies when not regulated, economic policies both public and private to concentrate capital at the top, and creation of barriers to entering a market (such as property owners refusing to sell to a pro-integration business person)

If a restaurant owner wants to cater to just whites, in AnonNY’s world he’s allowed to.  If white have (to pull a number out of my ass) 20% more disposable income than non-whites, the owner can pocket the difference.  Then after enough profit is accumulated, he can buy the integrated restaurant down the street.  But economically he’d be taking a hit because non-white have 20% disposable income so he has to make 20% for the same food.
OR! he can make it whites only, raise prices to the same as the original restaurant and raise prices at the original because; Hey, he just want to cater to a higher demographic.

Now change “Restaurant ” to “Grocery Store” or “Hospital”

What people who defend libertarianism even as they disagree with it fail to understand is most people really do argue backwards.  They start with the conclusion—-in anonNY’s case, that segregation is something that should be protected—-and rationalize it.  This is doubly obvious when they’re hugely inconsistent, as most libertarians are when they give a woman fewer rights over her uterus than they’d extend to a restaurant owner over his tables.

“And if they refuse to leave or crowded into your store, you’d demand that the authorities start shooting in order ensure that they follow your demands.”

...now, Tyro, you’ve gone too far.  We all know the authorities would start wildly tasing the “trespassers” first, repeatedly, and only resort to shooting if it was truly necessary.  assNY may be a libertarian, but he isn’t some kind of barbarian low life with no respect for other people…

It’s worth noting that many to most libertarians that think having someone standing on your lawn without your permission is a huge invasion of their dignity think that forced childbirth is no big deal.

To me, this is the real point. Rand Paul (and most so-called Libertarians I’ve encountered) have said, out loud and with malice aforethought, declared that the state should use its power to enforce childbirth. This puts women at somewhere less than full human. I don’t know how the Libertarian position can be said to have even the merest gloss of consistency when the rights of half the human population are held at less than the other half.

For that alone, Rand Paul and his ilk are shown to be frauds and liars. The misogyny and the racism can not be explained away, no matter how hard straight, white, middle-class males try.

@samp: Agreed, my analogy wasn’t meant as a defense. If anything, it demonstrates the real difference between segregation (where police are called upon to remove non-white “trespassers”) and small business in immigrant communities (who do their best to accommodate English speakers, even though they have no legal obligation to do so). Which is also why one had to be legally outlawed, while the other is perfectly acceptable.

Let’s take race out of it completely for a minute

Only 20-25% of Americans smoke.  It was once as high as 30%, but, at any rate, a considerable majority did NOT smoke.

Restaurants allowed smoking.  They fought as hard as possible against being forced to be non-smoking, regardless of health studies or the evidence from other places that had nonsmoking laws.  They insisted they would lose revenue.  They insisted that even though smokers were a minority, they spent more, they lingered after dinner, they bought after dinner drinks and dessert.  Losing smokers could not possibly be offset by an increase in non-smoking patrons, b/c smokers—needing an after dinner smoke—would take their dessert and drink money with them.

What happened?  Restaurant revenue went up.  The reason so many non-smokers left without ordering drinks/coffee/dessert was because the fucking smoke stunk up the joint.  Once the smokers—always a minority—were forced to keep their smoking to themselves, the majority enjoyed the dining experience more than enough to make up the difference.

My point?  Despite the evidence that they would be better off economically if they banned smoking outright, restaurants fought against it.  If it were up to the ‘free market’, these businesses would continue pleasing a minority that they incorrectly believed were better customers at the expense of the majority of customers.

If we add race back into the equation?  Same results, but worse since you’re now actually discriminating against a human being’s essence, as opposed to something they want to do.

The free market is bullshit.  The best product does not always win.  It tends toward monopoly, and once power is concentrated it is incredibly difficult for anyone else to break in.  Libertarians just want to believe that they are the John Galts that the rest of the world desperately needs and that they are deserving of much wealth and only held back by senseless regulations.

It’s bullshit.  And in Rand’s case, it’s racist bullshit that he totes deserves to be called on.

You know what’s the really funny bit about libertarians?  Almost without exception whenever they go on about it they always assume that they, personally, are never on the short end of the stick should their libertarian wet dream come to pass.

Libertarians never assume that they will be the ones turned away from the bathroom or the lunch counter or the store.  That they’ll never be the ones without property.  That they will never needs someone’s help.  That they will never need to be the recipient of that charity which they argue will obviously suffice when government programs are abolished, that their kids will never need a public school system, that they won’t be able to afford a needed service when everything is privatized, that they won’t be the ones at the receiving end of someone’s bad behaviour, and when they try to sue (which is, of course, the libertarian explanation for how justice will work), they will of course have the competent, affordable lawyer who will clearly win the case.

It’s the equivalent of an adolescent boy’s wet dream where he’s the superheroesque man of action with women fighting for the opportunity to give him a blow job.

http://pageonekentucky.com/2010/05/20/rand-paul-made-same-racial-comments-in-2002/

But we’re supposed to give him the benefit of the doubt b/c he isn’t defending racists, just the right of racists to be racists…

We all know the authorities would start wildly tasing the “trespassers” first, repeatedly, and only resort to shooting if it was truly necessary.  assNY may be a libertarian, but he isn’t some kind of barbarian low life with no respect for other people…

Radley Balko of reason.com (the most reality-based of the Koch-funded libertarian publications) writes truly excellent stuff decrying police use of tasers and other force, especially in no-knock drug raids.

Balko, however, might part ways with his AnoNY over the issue of whether people should be tased (or perhaps firehosed, non-lethally of course) because they’re supposedly “trespassing” on a public accommodation.

I’m guessing that Balko, being aware of how often racial discrimination informs police raids, doesn’t see much good coming from the absence of non-discrimination public accommodation laws, either. I may be wrong, but a little experience with real-world racism can do wonders, even for a white libertarian male.

I attended a segregated elementary school; second or third grade (I was seven or eight years old).  I was friendly with a black girl and we liked to talk thru the cyclone fence at recess.  I got suspended!  Really, the “Office” called my Dad at work to come and get me, and I couldn’t go back for the rest of the week.  I don’t know what happened to my friend. Probably something worse.  At home I asked my Dad what the deal was.  He didn’t answer (that I recall) but I do remember he had tears in his eyes.

A systemic denial of access to property or services strikes me as, yes, an affront to dignity and autonomy. Which, funny, is exactly what you think should become legal.

This is an awfully good point. And it is precisely what happened in the past, but it is also what anoNY claims could never happen.

Bottom line—if I want to have whites-only facilities and places if business, I’m going to advocate the same legal framework advocated by doctrinaire libertarians. If you want whites-only schools, whites-only restaurants, and whites-only HOAs, what legal philosophy are you going to advocate,

And lets be honest, it’s one thing when we’re talking about a restaurant. It’s an entirely different thing when we’re talking about distribution channels.

Let’s say small town X, the local stores are owned by a bunch of racist fucks, so the small minority group is unable to shop. So they try to open their own shop. But the local farmers won’t sell to them, the local energy providers won’t sell to them, local insurance providers won’t provide insurance, etc. It’s a VERY bad situation.

And the sad thing is? Race is an aside in the above situation. Take the alternate situation.

Local power company X with a monopoly cuts off the power to a bunch of companies in a town. They offer to buy up the companies for lower than market value. Once they have those companies, they do the same to other companies. And continue as so on.

This isn’t a hypothetical. This is how things used to work in a lot of places. And really, that’s the libertarian goal, the return of the Company Town.

#143 - completely correct. And who are the pretty much the only group of people on the planet who have the privilege to believe all these things about themselves, and organize a political party around such a delusion? 

Let’s see if anonyracist is aware enough to answer the question.

Segregation not only happened in recent memory, it happened in mine.

I’m only 60 (yes, only!) and I was so shaken by the harassment of civil rights protestors in the South that I saw on TV, that I began reading the work of black activist writers of the period, including James Baldwin, when I was about 10 years old.

And then, that summer my father, the rocket scientist, was to work for two months in Tenneessee, and on the drive down I saw first hand the shameful signs of segregation.  No matter the preparation, I was profoundly shocked by the bathrooms and water fountains labeled “White” and “Colored.”

I also noticed the shame-inducing aspects of “separate-but-equal,” while playing with some black children at the local drive-in’s playground: the atmosphere in the South was such that when the Civil War era movie included depictions of slavery, it was painfully apparent that those children were embarressed.

But what’s most insidious about segregation, what the Rand Paul’s of this world would like to ignore, is that when society agrees that some group is The Other and lesser, that encourages violence against that group.

My mother was a practicing Catholic and so took us children to Mass at a local Tennessee church—I remember it as pretty and white, with a steeple.

Afterwards when my mother complimented one of the local congregants on the church, that church lady replied, “Oh yes, we like it. And so far, it hasn’t been burned down, like the last three.”

Shaken isn’t the word for how I reacted, a stab of fear I’d never had to experience before as a little white suburban girl—that my mother’s religion could tempt vigilanties to burn me alive.

That to them I was The Other, too, and fair game.

In Rand Paul’s world, there is no protection for The Other, and we can all become The Other.

Local power company X with a monopoly cuts off the power to a bunch of companies in a town. They offer to buy up the companies for lower than market value. Once they have those companies, they do the same to other companies. And continue as so on.

This isn’t a hypothetical.

Especially when the power company abuses California’s referendum system with astroturf “citizens’ groups” in an effort to achieve that goal via the bad ol’ state (which AnoNY would no doubt blame for the whole fiasco). [exiledonline link—may be NSFW]

Guys like AnoNY long for the Company Town, without a moment’s thought that they wouldn’t be in charge. They capture it well in the BioShock videogame about the ruined underwater Randian paradise: “These sad saps. They come to Rapture, thinking they’re gonna be captains of industry. But they all forget that somebody’s gotta scrub the toilets.”

Based on the quality of AnoNY’s arguments, I think we know where he’d end up.

Judybrowni, thanks for that memory, very interesting.

I’m finally able to watch the full video and WOW.

She brought up the VERY REAL, VERY CONCRETE example of people getting the everliving shit beaten out of them for trying to desegregate the Walgreens lunch counter, and he dismisses her as bringing up an “abstract, obscure” example.

Nice, Rand. Real nice. I’m sure having the dogs sicked on them and feeling the billy clubs come down on their skulls felt really “abstract” to the civil rights activists at the time.

And I like his red herring about how we would have to allow people to carry guns into every restaurant just because we make restaurants serve black people. Because of the 2nd Amendment. Because, you know, a well regulated militia occasionally wants to go to White Castle.

Why on earth would anyone need the protection of the federal government against racial discrimination by property owners?

What outcome(s) under anonNY’s and Rand Paul’s philosophy when the “objectionable” part of the CRA is repealed?

Scene: Immediately post-repeal. Very small town in the South, geographically isolated from other towns by 20 miles or more. 85% white. African-Americans and their families live in this town, too, having been born and raised there. Since this is a very small town, there are only a very few restaurants, one grocery store, few car dealerships, etc.

AA family member wants to take family out for Sunday supper after church. The restaurant they want to patronize is within walking distance of their church and their home. This restaurant is privately owned by a white owner who does not want AAs in his restaurant. AA family is denied admittance. Well, they can just eat somewhere else! But all of the other restaurants are owned by folks who also don’t want to serve AAs. Well, they can just open their own restaurants! But hang on - no they can’t, b/c the landowners, descendants of plantation owners, won’t sell/lease to AAs: property rights!

So the AA family, unable to find a restaurant that will serve them, walks to the one small grocery store in town. It’s not part of a chain but rather a mom-and-pop operation, privately owned (of course). Guess what - they don’t want to serve AAs either. Forcing them to do so violates their dignity! As property owners!

Now the AA family can’t eat at the privately-owned restaurants or buy food in the privately-owned grocery store - which means they can’t eat at all. Okay, now what? Gee, just drive to the next town! But they don’t have a car! They’d never needed one before as they could walk to local businesses. Now they can’t buy a car, though, post-repeal. Why? Because the privately-owned car dealerships in their unfortunate little town doesn’t want to sell to AAs. And the buses owned and driven by the privately-owned bus companies don’t want to serve AAs. And the privately-owned moving companies won’t move AAs’ belongings out of their little town.

But we don’t want to interfere with the dignity of the freakin’ property owners. Nope, no racism here, right?

It was Woolworth’s lunch counters that were the object of sit-ins where protesters were beaten: Rachel corrected herself on that toward the end of the show.

I also remember shopping at the local Woolworth’s right up through high school. And yup, the one in New Jersey also had a lunch counter (good Sundaes.)  But local blacks were few and far between, which may have spared that Woolworth’s a sit-in up north. Or it was more likely that the Woolworth’s in northren cities were integrated.

We had a Woolworths in Santa Monica California right up through the early ‘90s, when it was replaced by a faux ‘50s Johnny Rockets “lunch counter.”

Walgreens, is I believe a business that originated later than the ‘50 and ‘60s.

judy—thanks. It didn’t feel right when I was typing Walgreens.

STOSSEL: Totally. I’m in total agreement with Rand Paul. You can call it public accommodation, and it is, but it’s a private business and if a private business wants to say we don’t want any blonde anchorwomen or mustached guys, it ought to be their right.

So Fox News and John Stossel are gung ho for racists!

As if we didn’t know…

I’m all for blonde wrestlers delivering open-handed slaps to mustached guys. You might say I’m gung ho for it. :D

@154: There’s a reason most libertarians vote Republican.  The scene you described is, to them, a feature, not a bug.

The other funny thing is that Rand Paul has run head first into a “Village Freakout.” No one in DC really cares about what’s in your heart or what side you might have been on in the 1960s. I’ve heard from my Hill friends that Strom Thurmond was quite charming. It doesn’t even matter if you advocated the use of torture. What matters is that you mouth a few platitude about what “everyone knows,” and one of those things is that you should publicly talk about how civil rights and the end of segregation was the right thing to do. There’s a social compact at work: you are not supposed to directly go to bat for racists without dogwhistles because it makes everyone else look bad. And Rand Paul made the conservatives look bad.u

  Modern day libertarians are just parasites on the civil and worker rights victories of the past. They are able to claim that the consequences of their beliefs won’t be that bad only because we eliminated the abuses of libertarians through the force of law in the past.

Ralph Nader called this “the liberal’s dilemma” in a speech/debate I saw several years back, i.e., liberal successes are used as reasons to not enact liberal policies.
Comment #90: Linnaeus on 05/20 at 11:51 AM

I don’t remember where I read it, but someone likened it to a movement to get rid of traffic lights, because with all the cars on the road, so few people actually hit each other, so they must not be necessary.

Of course, libertarians would not wait for authorities to deal with trespassers. Most think they have a right to shoot trespassers on sight.

I wouldn’t say that libertarians value property right over personal rights.  They see property rights as an extension of personal rights.  (Some choose the more perverse idea that personal rights are just an extension of property rights - that is, the “self” is something that you own.)

The real problem with libertarianism is the idea that property is some natural absolute right.  It never has been.  By taking property to be an extension of the self, you start to see trespassing and theft as violence to the self.  You start arguing that “taxation is theft,” which, to me, has the same dogmatic purity of the old leftist line, “property is theft.”

In fact, property has never been an absolute right.  This idea is a fiction, and not a useful one.

“So Fox News and John Stossel are gung ho for racists!”

...we must listen to John “Pornstache” Stossel, for he lives on a higher plane of existence and is therefore an authority on all things political and social.  We ignore him at our peril…

Libertarianism Makes You Stupid:

One of the seamiest and ugliest aspects of Libertarianism is its support of turning back the civil-rights clock to pre-1964 legal situation for businesses. “I am not making this up”. They’re very explicit about it:

“Consequently, we oppose any government attempts to regulate private discrimination, including choices and preferences, in employment, housing, and privately owned businesses. The right to trade includes the right not to trade—for any reasons whatsoever; the right of association includes the right not to associate, for exercise of the right depends upon mutual consent.”

That’s “rights” according to Libertarianism. Whites-only lunch counters, “No Jews or dogs” hotels, “we don’t serve your kind here”, “No Irish need apply”, “This is man’s job”, etc. All this is a “right of association” in Libertarian theology.

Such a weird position is not just the purview of some position-writers in a corner, but a surprisingly common trait of Libertarians. It’s one of the surest way of identifying one, if they justify such a reactionary position from abstract considerations.

It must be stressed that a) Libertarians ARE NOT racists, sexists, etc. and b) The above is not meant to comment either way on the much more controversial affirmative-action debate. Libertarians can go to town whenever they’re called racist, sexist, and so on for the above (gee, how could anyone ever get that idea?), proclaiming their great personal but private commitment to equality. Of course, they never have to do anything much in this regard since events have passed them by. But they want make sure you know they fully support the ideals, even if they think the all the past decades legal effort should be repealed as immoral and unprincipled. They also love to switch the debate the affirmative action, because that’s far more contentious than anti-discrimination. But the position’s very plain. Drinking from the wrong water fountain would presumably be “initiation of force”, allowing relation of force to eject the malefactor.

I’d been wondering how long it would be before this ugly nature of libertarianism would come out of the teabaggers for the nation to see.

What about how I don’t want to eat at a racist-run place that would happily let *me* in? What if I’m not at home, so I don’t know the details of this new town? And that they don’t have any signs up because we’re in Utah, and there are no “coloreds” around anyway. Sure, I have a choice… but not enough information to make it. After all, what’s to stop the business owner from lying?

Libertarianism pre-supposes an awful lot of knowledge on an individual level. I’m smart. I read very fast, and I remember things easily and well. I even have time to do some research at home on topics that interest or concern me. I have trouble with the lack of regulating we have *today*, forget about the wet-dream that is Somalia. The expectation that I know what every chemical in my food is, and make individual choices about whether or not to consume it, that I can just research to find which products are made with Roundup-Ready seed, is insane. I don’t want to have to worry about every god damn thing in my life. I want to know my food is reasonably safe and free of contaminants, that restaurants adhere to basic levels of hygiene, and that my car won’t roll over and explode with reasonable use. That a crib won’t kill my baby.

Yet there they are, bold as brass, saying that the “markets” will fix everything. Only if the consumer is informed, and how can we be about everything, always? It used to be you could look for High Fructose Corn Syrup on a label and be done, but people didn’t like that, and wouldn’t buy it, so now it’s called HFC, or even other things. And what about people who just aren’t as smart, or are dyslexic, or whatever?

Racism is a very serious issue, but as others have mentioned, it is but the tip of the Libertarian iceburg of woe.

Gracchus serious points for the TANSTAAFL reference.

I can’t take anyone seriously who was named after Ayn Rand. I just can’t. Possibly because I’ve actually read Atlas Shrugged.

Breaking News:

He seems to have retrenched: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/20100520/pl_ynews/ynews_pl2171

Breaking News:

He seems to have retrenched

The headline:

“Paul changes course, now supports Civil Rights Act in full”

Paul being a U.S. Senate candidate. For the state of Kentucky. In 2010.

Where’s that photo someone posted the other day? Ah, there it is.

But after a firestorm of criticism today, Paul told Ingraham that it was a “poor political decision” to go on Maddow’s show and declared that he supports both the ban on public discrimination and the ban on private discrimination.

Yes, there’s the problem, Rand: you went on a cable news show where the host wouldn’t just nod and say “uh huh ... I see” to everything you said and then ask about your favourite colour or your dog’s name. That’s definitely a poor political decision if you’re a Republican.

GOP teabagger candidate Rand Paul also believes ‘a free society’ will allow ‘hate-filled groups to exclude people based on the color of their skin’

by John Aravosis (DC) on 5/20/2010 05:00:00 PM

He’s not a racist. He just believes people should be free to discriminate against black people. And the difference in practice is?

In a May 30, 2002, letter to the Bowling Green Daily News, Paul’s hometown newspaper, he criticized the paper for endorsing the Fair Housing Act, and explained that “a free society will abide unofficial, private discrimination, even when that means allowing hate-filled groups to exclude people based on the color of their skin.”

http://www.americablog.com/2010/05/gop-teabagger-candidate-rand-paul-also.html#disqus_thread

Three years after I smacked up against the Randian principle in Tennessee, four little girls suffered the extrapolation:

http://www.4littlegirls.com/

Rand doesn’t like follow up questions.

And he willingly went on Rachel Maddow’s show.

Gracchus serious points for the TANSTAAFL reference.

Thanks. I don’t ask much of Libertarians, but they should at least know the key memes from their own movement’s literature.

“Paul changes course, now supports Civil Rights Act in full”

That’s white of him.

tpm has a nice reminder of the paul spokesman who resigned due to extremely racist comment on his myspace page. but, i’m sure that’s just a coincidence, too:

“In December, Chris Hightower, the spokesman for Paul’s senate campaign, was forced to resign after a liberal Kentucky blog discovered that his MySpace page had a comment posted around Martin Luther King Day that read: “HAPPY N***ER DAY!!!” above what appears to be a historical photo of the lynching of a black man.”

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/05/flashback_paul_spokesman_resigned_over_racist_mysp.php?ref=fpb

What I luurv about the first interview is how Rand says that:
1) It’s difficult to even know what the CRA says
2) He thinks the CRA leaves a lot to be desired (even though he doesn’t know what it says, he knows enough to disapprove)
3) He hasn’t really read it
4) The reason he hasn’t read it is because it wouldn’t help him with campaigning, and so it obviously isn’t important.
Fucking magnets, anyone?

#148: This systematic refusal of service you describe is uncannily similar to Sodoma. Genesis’ version is edited out so only the rape threats are left, but there’s older text where it’s said that the *cough*xenophobic racist*cough* sodomites lived in a fertile oasis surrounded by desert and didn’t want to share it, so whenever they had travellers/would-be-immigrants arriving in the city, they’d deny them access to food, water and shelter, refuse to accept foreign currency, refuse to buy whatever the travellers had to offer in exchange for local currency, and for a sodomite, to give something to a foreigner as charity was punished with death. The plan was that the travellers would try to go on to the next city, die on the way and then the sodomites would loot the corpses.

Actually, if you defend the rights of people to shut out other people in private places and shut them out of jobs on the basis of their race, then you are a racist. It’s as simple as that,

Er, no.  If you shut out other people in private places and shut them out of jobs on the basis of their race, then you are a racist.  If you defend the right of people to do this, you may or may not be a racist.

I support the right of people to sleep with members of the same sex as themselves, should they so desire.  That does not make me gay.

My support, within context, may lead to a general acceptance of homosexual conduct (~racism) in society.  That still doesn’t make me gay (~racist).  It may mean that I regard homosexuality in society (~racism) as not worth worrying about, or as less of a problem than sexual freedom (~freedom of association).

I believe your case, while it may be true for some individuals, is unfounded as a general argument.  Try presenting it with better support.

If you defend the right of people to do this, you may or may not be a racist.

No.  It means you are a racist.

Defending the ‘right’ of a business to deny civil rights based on race is racist.  Choosing the ‘right’ of a business over the rights of a human on the basis of race is racist.

Defending the right of humans to marry, even if they are of the same sex is not the same thing at all.  It doesn’t make you gay, it makes you not homophobic. 

Defending the ‘right’ to deny jobs, housing, and, yes, marriage rights to people because they are gay makes you homophobic—not homosexual.

Again, taking the right of a business over a human is all kinds of fucked up.  Sticking by an ‘ideal’ only when it works for you (remember, Rand likes socialist evil government programs like Medicare when they pay him) and wanting to cut them when it affects others, is also fucked up.

He’s a racist.  Anyone who takes libertarian ideals to that extreme is.

Defending the ‘right’ of a business to deny civil rights based on race is racist.

The “civil right” in question is the ability to do business with that establishment.  A business which will not do business with you may indeed be acting out of bigotry without necessarily violating your civil rights, IMHO. Specifically, I hold that there is a right for individuals to do business in society in general (i.e. you have to buy to live) but not necessarily with any particular company (i.e. a particular company can refuse to do business with you).  Obviously, the balance between this general right and the right of association of those in business becomes a contested field.

People who are in business also have rights, such as that of free association.  I am NOT making the case that this necessarily trumps the rights of others to shop there (I am not a libertarian, and I’m in a different context than that of America).  I AM making the case that putting forward this case is not necessarily a racist act.

Again, taking the right of a business over a human is all kinds of fucked up. 

The assumption is that being denied the ability to associate with a particular establishment is a violation of rights.  I disagree; it is only a violation of rights when it is a general attitude that materially interferes with the victims ability to live. 

If MacDonalds won’t serve people with green eyes, this may be bigoted, but it does not violate my rights.  If every eating establishment won’t serve people with green eyes, then my rights are in danger.

Defending the right of humans to marry, even if they are of the same sex is not the same thing at all.  It doesn’t make you gay, it makes you not homophobic. 

I did not mention marriage rights.  I mentioned homosexual conduct, which has been illegal in many American jurisdictions (and in NZ at one time).

We would claim that people have a right to sleep with whom they wish, to be gay.  This does not make us gay; this means we are defending the rights of others to be gay.  We may not even like gays or the idea of homosexuality, but we still defend it.

A libertarian may claim that people, even people in business, have a right to associate or not associate, and this extends to people in business not serving customers for whatever reason they want.  This does not make the libertarian a bigot; this means they are defending the rights of others to be bigots.

I am claiming that the argument that defending the rights of others to be bigots is in itself an act of bigotry is not supported.  “Rights” may compete - I may hold that the right of people to sexual freedom may well trump other people’s right not to be inconvenienced by public displays of homosexual conduct. 

Someone may well legitimately hold that the right of free association, even for those in business, may trump other people’s right to equal treatment by private entities, even while decrying such discrimination.  Therefore, I hold that such a defence is not necessarily racist.

As for myself, this argument is weakened if bigotry is a general attitude materially affecting the minority discriminated against, but strengthened if a business owners bigotry does not materially affect that minority.  Therefore, whether or not I like discrimination, I assess whether discrimination is allowable based not on an absolute judgement but on whether or not people are getting by in the face of discrimination. 

There are a lot of things I don’t like which I support people being allowed to do, and a lot of things I tolerate without endorsing.  Given that we are talking about people necessarily assessing competing ethical principles, making absolute judgements about their motivations is problematic.

Actually, if you defend the rights of people to shut out other people in private places and shut them out of jobs on the basis of their race, then you are a racist. It’s as simple as that,

Er, no.  If you shut out other people in private places and shut them out of jobs on the basis of their race, then you are a racist.  If you defend the right of people to do this, you may or may not be a racist.

PiatoR, I think you are right on the semantics/logic but wrong on the ground.  People who defend the rights of people to shut out other people are racist, not because these “rights” are necessarily racist in isolation, but because of their bad faith.  We’ve seen it.  We know what they value and defend.  As Amanda has observed, a real small-L libertarian would be horrified by forced birth, but these guys aren’t.  As others have noted, this movement consists mainly of privileged white men—suggesting that it doesn’t care about the downtrodden, because if it did, more downtrodden people would identify with it. 

Count me among the disillusioned dabblers in libertarianism.  I revere John Stuart Mill, and for a while I thought libertarianism was the main heir to his work.  Alas, it turned out to be wankers all the way down.

Specifically, I hold that there is a right for individuals to do business in society in general (i.e. you have to buy to live) but not necessarily with any particular company (i.e. a particular company can refuse to do business with you).

This is disingenuous.  We’re not talking about a single individual having an issue with a single establishment.  We are talking about Rand Paul saying that businesses should have a right to discriminate against all black people, should they choose.  That businesses can discriminate against entire classes of people b/c they have a right that outweighs the right of members of that class to engage in public accomodations.

This is why we have the Civil Rights Acts.  It’s not just a theory.  We have lived the reality that disproves Rand’s assertion.  The free market does NOT do anything to stop racism; it’s more than happy to marginalize entire classes of people, even to businesses’ economic disadvantage.

Again, this is not some theoretical discussion.  The Civil Rights Acts were passed in order to change the reality of a segregated, racist country.  They did so so well that people are actually arguing that the ‘free market’ wouldn’t allow it, despite the fact that the free market did no such thing.

You also have to understand that Rand is the darling of the Tea Party.  He is a Tea Party candidate, and the Tea Party is made up of Dixiecrats—people who left the Democratic party when the Civil Rights Acts were passed, i.e., racists.

They love to dress their arguments up in “states’ rights” and “freedom” but what they really want is a return to segregation and second class citizenship for POC.  The fact Obama is black and in the WHITE House blows their minds.

I did not mention marriage rights.  I mentioned homosexual conduct, which has been illegal in many American jurisdictions (and in NZ at one time).

No, you made a bad analogy while trying to take race out of it: “Supporting gay rights does not make you gay.”  No, it doesn’t make you gay, in exactly the same way as denying them their rights does not make you straight.  Denying them their rights makes you homophobic, no matter how many gay friends you have.

The equivalent would be “supporting black people’s rights does not make you black” and “denying black people rights does not make you white.”  Denying them their rights, even under the guise of granting rights to a business makes you racist.  Racist, not black.

Because your actions are racist, and your freedom arguments are bullshit.

Can a business refuse to serve a single black man?  Sure.  But if you serve the public, you have to serve all the public. 

Rand would like to remove that part of the law and allow segregation to return.  He’s claiming that segregation wouldn’t come back, but we have plenty of cases every year that show that without laws protecting their rights, black people would be denied all sorts of access.

That’s racist no matter how you dress it up.  It’s so racist, so anti-american, that he’s had to back off and say that he would not support a repeal of the Civil Rights Act (though he still refuses to say he would have voted for it).

You cannot simply look at theory.  You have to look at reality, and the reality that disproves this entire stupid line of argument is not that far away.

Theoretically, white people might be discriminated against.  In reality, the people already in power don’t suffer.  In reality, in the current world, businesses violate the CRA.  People are discriminated against as entire classes.  Rand believes that they should just suffer in order to protect the business owner’s ‘right’ to be a racist fuck.

It’s racist.  Repealing the CRA is racist.  Failing to support it, and Rand refuses to say he would have voted for it or that it has been a good thing, is racist.  Without it, we’d still have American apartheid.

Make no mistake: that is exactly the reality most Tea Partiers would like to return to—one where n*ggers knew their place.

Did Rand say it like that?  No.  He dressed it up in pretty libertarian bullshit.  But the result of what he advocates is the same: rights for whites.

PiatoR, I think you are right on the semantics/logic but wrong on the ground.  People who defend the rights of people to shut out other people are racist, not because these “rights” are necessarily racist in isolation, but because of their bad faith.  We’ve seen it.

More importantly, they’re objectively pro-racist. Results are what matter, not motivation.

judybrowni - Walgreens has been around since the 20s, although they really expanded during Prohibition, due to their sales of “medicinal” alcohol (just like the medical marijuana we have here in California):

http://www.projo.com/opinion/contributors/content/CW_okrent20_05-20-10_PMIHQ1D_v7.8fa74a0.html

Ah, didn’t do the research on Walgreens, and had no memory of them, half a century ago.

Not only was Woolworth’s the “Five and Dime” of our locale (although prices had exceeded those figures by mid-century), but Woolworths seemed to be entrenched in popular culture.

Don’t remember a Walgreens…perhaps because Woolworths originated on the east coast, in New York State, and Walgreens in the midwest, Chicago. Could be there was a regional divide.

In either case, it was “A Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina became the setting for a significant event during the civil rights movement,” making Woolworths infamous, as well as famous.

Although Victorian originated Woolworth’s had begun to seem musty even by the ‘50s, being replaced by the “discount stores”—such as Two Guys from Harrison, at least by early ‘60s (which had no lunch counters.) And “the shopping centers” that would be supplanted in precedence by giant Malls.

At least in my experience of small town and suburan New Jersey.

great thread.  i’ve been following this issue pretty closely, and i’ve learned a bit from this thread.

here are the words that come to mind right now:

property rights uber alles.  property rights conflated with or ascendant over human rights.  a flimsy disguise of “intellectual,” “good faith” arguments covering ugly intent of a neo-confederate faction.  sheer naivety, undiluted greed, and definate sociopathic tendencies. 

it was important for me to learn the distinction between some of the younger libertarian set who have been fed decades of anti-government rancor, and who have a tendency to use libertarianism’s absolute, rigid notions to push each other toward anarchy out of ignorance, and those more contrived masters of the art, who are hypocritical in that they have no compunction about using the force of the state to uphold their property rights above everything else.