In listening to the fallout over Rand Paul’s comments about the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a few things stand out for me:
Am I the only one who thinks it’s crazy that a person can advocate mass murder, and pre-emptive war and can still be a part of civilized discourse, but use the “N” word, and they’re ruined? The charge of “racism” has become the lowest kind of smear one can make against one’s opponents, and if substantiated, can end a career. Meanwhile, the cheerleaders for the wars, and the war crimes, continue to be welcome in polite society. Am I the ONLY one who thinks there is something wrong with that? That we as a culture seem to have elevated name calling to a higher offense than advocating murder and wars of aggression?
Two: The Rand Paul Kerfuffle is not about race. It is about property rights.
Some commentators have claimed that Rand Paul is “putting property rights above human rights.” But what does that even mean? The conflict is NOT between “property” rights and “human” rights, but between the rights of one person or group of people, and those of another*. In this case, we are talking about the right of a business owner to control who comes on to his or her property vs. the right of a customer to enter onto another person’s property and do business with him or her. Unless someone can explain to me how a person can have a “human right” to do business with someone else against their will, what we’re really talking about are both property rights and the right of free association.
Proponents of the Civil Rights Act do seem to recognize these rights in some settings. I don’t think any of those who are piling on Rand Paul would argue that the government should “step in” and require that people not discriminate on the basis of race when choosing their friends or their mates, for instance. Apparently, the government’s right to intervene magically appears once economic transactions are involved. Why is this? Well, according to Jacob Hornberger:
I suspect that the answer lies in the long-time, deep antipathy that liberals have to the free market — to free enterprise — to capitalism — to profit.
I don’t think he is far off. And it’s not just the fact that money changes hands that justifies government intervention. As David Kramer notes:
A racist White store owner cannot legally prevent a Black customer from trading with him. Yet, a racist White customer can legally prevent a Black store owner from trading with him by just not walking into his store. So what’s the difference? In both cases, one of the two parties (i.e., the Black person) in the trade is being economically “hurt” by the other party (i.e., the racist White person).
The difference, of course, is in the minds of those who buy into the fallacy that economic transactions are by their very nature lopsided; that the business owner always has more power than the customer. Of course real life experience gives the lie to this belief (particularly the real life experience of anyone who has seen their business go under), yet it remains pervasive. The belief seems to go something like this: That by virtue of going into business, business owners now somehow control all of the resources that others require in order to survive, and therefore have an obligation to provide those resources to everyone. But if we accept this logic (and the weird premise it is based on), then we have to accept that business owners are also obligated to provide food, shelter, clothing, etc. to whomever needs it. They cease to be property owners and become nothing more than servants of some mixed-economy welfare state.
And this, I think, gets more to the heart of why most people really don’t get what Rand Paul was saying about the Civil Rights Act: Most Americans really don’t take any kind of principled position on private property rights or indeed on the use of force. The prevailing ethic -- if one can call it that -- seems to be: If people are not behaving the way I think they should be, then force is justified to get them to do so. If a problem -- any problem -- is identified, force is not only justified, but is usually the first solution most Americans will embrace.
Three: One thing advocates of civil rights legislation tend to gloss over is that racial segregation was itself largely the result of government legislation (they were called Jim Crow LAWS for a reason). Libertarians have pointed this out, as well as the fact that private businesses were already starting to desegregate in ways that they could before the Civil Rights Act was enacted. This is all wonderful, but for me it really misses the point, which is that:
IN A FREE SOCIETY, PEOPLE HAVE A RIGHT TO BE ASSHOLES!!!
I don’t know how else to say this. You do not have a right to have everyone like you. You do not get to demand that people associate with you if they don’t want to. And, in a free society, you do not get to tell other people what they can and cannot do with their property as long as they are not doing anything that infringes upon anyone else’s rights. This is what living in a free society -- and indeed what true tolerance -- entails: Putting up with behavior from other people that you may find personally abhorrent, but that does not violate anyone else’s rights. To try to prohibit “offensive” behavior creates a world crawling with petty little dictators where nobody is really free.
For the record: I do not condone racist behavior. I (along with most Americans, I’m sure) would not do business with an establishment that refused to serve people of a particular race, ethnic group, etc. I also do not think that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 heralded the beginning of the end of freedom in America (that happened much earlier) or even comes close to being one of the worst pieces of legislation from a pro-liberty point of view.
What I do think is that the animated discussion in the wake of Rand Paul’s comments on the issue provides a great illustration of how Americans think -- and how they don’t. The fact that his comments generated as much noise as they did is testimony to how unfamiliar Americans are with questioning government force on principle. This question -- the question of when force is justified and when it is not -- is central to building and sustaining a free society. If this discussion is any indication, most Americans are ill-equipped to respond to this question, and are not terribly interested in asking it. That fact alone should be far more disturbing to anyone who cares about liberty than anything Rand Paul has to say about Civil Rights legislation.
* And does anyone -- other than this guy -- seriously believe that when libertarians argue for property rights, they are arguing that pieces of property HAVE rights?
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Judy Mandelbaum
Kerry Lauerman
Joan Walsh
Salon.com
Comments
When you have tens or hundreds of soNsos that's when you get to the dogs and water cannons and the false arrests.
ex.: Rand Role Model Lester Maddox's campaign graphic- the axe handle. He won.
In fact, the sit ins ended up being very successful in getting businesses to desegregate, without the need for legislation. (Police brutality, meanwhile, continues to this day. Check out videos of the 2008 Republican and Democratic Conventions if you don't know what I'm talking about.)
I could pose the same hypothetical to you: What if a bunch of businesses decided to blatantly violate the prohibitions against discrimination and started putting up signs saying "no blacks allowed" -- ultimately, the enforcement of anti-discrimination law would be done with force. The question is: When is force justified, and when is it not?
"Three: One thing advocates of civil rights legislation tend to gloss over is that racial segregation was itself largely the result of government legislation (they were called Jim Crow LAWS for a reason). Libertarians have pointed this out, as well as the fact that private businesses were already starting to desegregate in ways that they could before the Civil Rights Act was enacted. This is all wonderful, but for me it really misses the point, which is that:
IN A FREE SOCIETY, PEOPLE HAVE A RIGHT TO BE ASSHOLES!!! "
This is fucking bullshit and you, sadly, don't even know you're an apologist.
Jim Crow laws, and this is hardly a secret, were enacted following the killing and maiming of freed slaves by the White League (whose members were former confederate soldiers, so, basically, by their former enslavers) with the roles of black Republican voters going from 100,000 to 4ooo in short order. All this started the minute the GOVERNMENT- yes it was the US, our government, pulled its troops. Once they killed, indentured, tortured and drove off the blacks they threatened the Republican southern whites with death or conversion (familiar?) and following this genocide and electoral abuse they elected, themselves, and enacted STATE BASED HATE LEGISLATION to make sure the black man was kept down. This went on until people died for the RIGHTS (WE the People, not selfish haters who can do as they please, that was never a right) Rand Paul claims are philosophically tenous. I marched in 64, I had Freedom Rider friends, you, young un', are NO Freedom Rider.
There's your comment.
But anyway. You say: "Unless someone can explain to me how a person can have a “human right” to do business with someone else against their will, what we’re really talking about are both property rights and the right of free association."
That's actually quite easy to answer. If you want to throw a black man out of your cafe, who do you call? My guess is you would have to call the police, which is financed by tax payers. As a businessman you enjoy the services of the state in many ways, including security (police, laws, the court system), communications (publicly funded roads, access to electricity and phone lines), economic institutions (currency) etc. It is not unreasonable for the state to say: "As our services make your business possible, we require you to serve all customers regardless of race." (Yes, it's that good old social contract.) You don't have to be their friend, but you have to accept their money. You can be an asshole all you like, but you can't restrict the service you provide on the basis of race.
There is also a practical side to this. The free market had 100 years to end segregation in the South, but failed miserably. If your principles require you to condone the perpetuation of that system, you really should ask yourself if your principles are worth much. To simply say: "That's a shame, but I have to go wherever my ideology leads me, even if it is to an Apartheid state," is a gigantic cop-out.
Fortnuately I think most people in this country are more like me than the Jerry Springer crowd that seems to be commenting on your article. We all want to make the best lives for ourselves and our families that we can - so we don't make decisions based on qualities that don't matter - like the color of someone's skin or the country their parents were born in. Maybe there was a time for anti-discrimination laws, maybe there wasn't - I can't speak to what occurred before I was born. But I think it is a pretty sad reflection on the state of this country today if the general concensus is that we need to have these kinds of decisions made for us.
"My guess is you have never been the subject of discrimination.
People who have tend to be less blasé about it."
Actually, I spent ten years in Asia. I've had plenty of racism
(and sexism) thrown my way.
"As a businessman you enjoy the services of the state in many ways, including security (police, laws, the court system), communications (publicly funded roads, access to electricity and phone lines), economic institutions (currency) etc. It is not unreasonable for the state to say: "As our services make your business possible, we require you to serve all customers regardless of race."
So let me get this straight: The government takes money from me
without my consent. It then establishes a monopoly police force
and justice system with which (for criminal complaints anyway) nobody is allowed to compete. I am then bound to accept without question whatever terms they set for providing me with this "service." And that to you constitutes the basis for a "human right"??? By this line of reasoning, ANYTHING that any government decides is by definition right and just. (Including, by the way, the government-enforced segregation in the South.)
"The free market had 100 years to end segregation in the South,
but failed miserably."
This is patently false. The civil rights movement was incredibly
effective in getting businesses to desegregate. Look into the history
of the sit-ins and boycotts if you don't believe me. Businesses, and even some local government entities, were desegregating well before the Civil Rights Act came into being.
But that's all kind of beside the point, which is that you don't get
to use force against everything that you don't like. Even if the
sit-ins and boycotts had not been effective,that still would not
have justified bringing in the state to force private businesses to desegregate.
I don’t think he is far off.
I think he's clueless. Consider the "public accommodations" issue (a phrase in the title of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and covered in Title II). Black people couldn't travel freely in the south; they'd have no idea, arriving at some stopping point, whether food, lodging, and so forth were available to them as they were to white people. Many practical restrictions were in place due to individual decisions that all went in the same direction. Doesn't the urge to deal with what most would agree is an unjust situation sound like a better explanation than liberals being opposed to the free market?
You sound like a sincere libertarian, Bretigne. I've met some in the past. There are any number of things we've disagreed about. For example, sexual harrassment on the job (to be clear, harrassment of the form "sleep with me or you're fired") is illegal, and I think that's good. Some libertarians think such laws infringe on individuals' rights; the target is free to quit, after all. What do you think?
That said, are you *sure* Rand Paul doesn't support mass murder and preemptive war? Look, I want to have someone new in Congress I can believe in as much as anyone, and I'd like to think the system can work, but before you jump to any conclusions, check out Rand Paul's positions on the War in Afghanistan (he would have voted for it), Iraq (he would have declared war against it), Iran (be more belligerent), or Israel (never criticize it). I'm not making this up, check out his positions on his own website, this should get you started:
http://www.randpaul2010.com/2010/02/rand-paul-a-strong-national-defense-and-a-pro-american-foreign-policy/
http://www.dailypaul.com/node/135294
"If I had been in the U.S. Senate, I would have stopped them and said no more, we will have a vote. We will declare war with Afghanistan. We will declare war with Iraq. I would have voted for a declaration of war with Afghanistan, but I would have voted against a declaration of war with Iraq. But I would have made them vote. And that's the problem. They no longer pay attention to the rules."
~Rand Paul
Oh Really, Rand? The problem isn't the hundreds of thousands of dead people, the bogus causus belli, the billions of wasted dollars or the worst refugee crisis on Earth some years, the problem is that Roberts Rules of Order of whatever weren't followed?
Sure sounds like just another neo-con to me.
Re: "Doesn't the urge to deal with what most would agree is an unjust situation sound like a better explanation than liberals being opposed to the free market?"
To be clear, Jacob was not addressing anyone’s motivation for fighting segregation, but rather what he sees as liberals’ hypocrisy on the issue of freedom of association. Here are his comments in the context of his article:
"The essence of a free society is one in which people are free to live their lives any way they choose, so long as their conduct is peaceful. Freedom necessarily entails the right to make choices that other people find offensive, abhorrent, unpopular, and irresponsible. If people are free only to make the correct choices, then they are not truly free.
"Liberals understand this principle, but only up to a point. That's why they support the right of homeowners and Nazi sympathizers to discriminate. But they steadfastly refuse to extend their principles to private businesses.
"Why?
"I suspect that the answer lies in the long-time, deep antipathy that liberals have to the free market - to free enterprise - to capitalism - to profit. This of course raises the ugly head of socialism, the economic philosophy that has long attracted the liberal community."
I think he is right and, as I mentioned in my post, I think widespread belief in the “fallacy that economic transactions are by their very nature lopsided; that the business owner always has more power than the customer" has a lot to do with this double standard. I doubt that those who drafted the Civil Rights Act tried to come up with ways to force consumers not to discriminate on racial grounds in making buying decisions, but abandoned the idea on practical grounds. I assert that they would have been morally opposed to the idea of controlling individual decisions in this way, and rightly so. The same moral stance should also apply to businesses, but for most people it does not, for the reasons Jacob and I give.
This double standard is all the more unjustified when one considers that (again, as I mentioned above) segregation was something that was required BY LAW. (Not just “individual decisions that all went in the same direction”.) It takes a very special kind of blindness to ignore this fact, and to seek out remedies from the very entity that had institutionalized the problem in the first place, when trying to address the injustice. Particularly when (as I also mentioned above) non-governmental solutions were showing themselves to be remarkably successful in breaking down segregation. I call this kind of blindness an ideological attachment to governmental solutions and an antipathy for free markets. But maybe you have another explanation.
Re: “...sexual harrassment on the job (to be clear, harrassment of the form "sleep with me or you're fired") is illegal, and I think that's good. Some libertarians think such laws infringe on individuals' rights; the target is free to quit, after all. What do you think?”
I don’t believe that force is ever justified except as a response to force or fraud. (And I have a very limited view on the fraud part - probably more so than most libertarians.) So no, I don’t think it should be illegal for a boss to threaten to fire someone if they don’t sleep with him or her. That said, I can think of plenty of remedies for this issue that don’t require state intervention - contracts being the most obvious. If the demand is not already a violation of the employment contract, then contracts could certainly be written to preclude such behavior.
I guess what I find baffling, as someone who does not believe in the initiation of force, is not so much that others disagree with me about when force becomes necessary, but that so many don’t even ask the question. It seems to me that most Americans are so comfortable with using the force of the state to get whatever result they want that it never occurs to them to even question the morality of doing so.
Re: “That said, are you *sure* Rand Paul doesn't support mass murder and preemptive war?”
No, I’m not! In fact, I am very much opposed to much of what he has said on issues of war and civil liberties. I did not intend this post to be a defense of Rand Paul, and don’t mean to give the impression that I am a Rand Paul supporter. I used the example of the uproar over his statements as an illustration of the larger issue, which is that we as a culture treat “offensive speech” as a worse offense than speech (and indeed, action) that defends and even facilitates the actual murder of innocent human beings.
(Thanks for pointing this out, BTW, and giving me the opportunity to clarify this.)