Say the owner wants $50 a night, and I only have $40, so he turns me away. I’ve been harmed by the owner’s control over his property.
We’ve been over this.
Consider all the other laws that affect a hotel owner: fire codes, sanitation standards in the kitchen, that sort of things. What all of them do is prohibit a transaction: it’s illegal to operate the hotel in violation of the fire code, or to operate the kitchen without a health permit. What other laws compel, rather than forbid, a transaction by our hotel owner?
The harm done is exactly the same; the situations are treated differently because it’s not the harm that’s the basis for the law, it’s the intent behind the harm.
Why do you keep making those “exactly the same” arguments?
The ‘harm’ that was defined in the Heart of Atlanta vs U.S. was that there was harm done to black folks ability to travel and use interstate highways. Those victims of racist bigots like Moreton Rolleston were not harmed because they didn’t have enough money to rent a room for the night, they were harmed because of racial discrimination committed by property owners that were engaged in commerce that affect the ability to travel of a minority group.
Your ‘ten dollars short’ harm is not ‘exactly the same’ kind of harm that has been under discussion. You being ‘ten bucks short’ of what you need for that room is your problem. You have harmed yourself by being too poor to buy what you want.
That is not the same as being born black and being turned down when in need of a room when you have the money and you are no different from the acceptable white customers. And as long as the sought after hotel is not booked and full.
I wonder why you make far-fetched equivalence arguments about ‘harm’ in order to defend the liberty of people like Moreton Rolleston and future generations of jerks when you have agreed that Title II’s harm or costs to our liberty are **‘costs at a theoretical level’ **and has primarily mostly maybe negatively impacted the liberty and freedom of racists and bigots.
Your claim that Title II creates the idea of quasi-public property where ‘the state may force transactions to which one party doesn’t consent’ is also problematic. And that is because it is doubtful that people like Moreton Rolleston ever made a transaction without his consent after 1964.
**Black people **of equal means and disposition **are equal to white people **and you agree; so all of Moreton’s transactions at his hotel after 1964 were with people of equal means and disposition. He was not forced to cut ten bucks off for black people because they didn’t have fifty bucks for a room.
And why would it necessarily be the threat of prison that forced Moreton to let black folks ‘equally’ visit his Heart of Atlanta Hotel. IF he kept the hotel and took down the ‘white’s only’ sign it was his decision that he wanted the public’s money more than he hated black people so he himself decided to continue his engagement in interstate commerce after he lost his case and his big day at the Supreme Court.
His free speech right to express his hatred of black people could have remained with him unless he somehow decided to turn into a decent human being somewhere along the way by realizing that all men and women are created equal.
There was no ‘threat of prison’ that forced Rolleston to give up his expression of hate against blacks if indeed he ever did quit being a bigot.
It is exactly the same: being denied a room due to the owner’s policies, resulting in a transaction that one party doesn’t consent to. Setting the cost of the room is a policy just like a racial restriction is.
A core difference between us is that I think jerks and bigots have rights, too. You don’t care about their rights because you think they are bad people and deserve what they get. I don’t think the government should be in the business of criminalizing opinions of any kind. Today, you applaud it, tomorrow, after the next law that seizes control of property for moral reasons, perhaps not.
Hey, we’ve been over this, too. When rights are infringed, the offended party often has the option of shutting up and going along to avoid adverse consequences. That doesn’t lessen the infringement. If the government made it a crime to practice Islam, and your Muslim neighbor promptly converted to Christianity rather than face prison time, would you point and crow that he must have loved Christ more than Allah?
I care about rights and freedom for jerks just as much as you do. But I have not seen where you make a case that people like Moreton Rolleston had his rights infringed by the CRA. When a jerk makes a decision to use the public infrastructure to make money it is his decision and his decision alone to join the public commerce and conform to the universal idea that black people are equal to white people when they travel the nation’s highways.
Rolleston has no right to harm black people by using his publically opened and offered property as the weapon of harm on a basis of race. You have manufactured a belief that Rolleston has that right to harm people even as you know that it was his decision to engage in public commerce. The right to use commercial property to harm that you think exists just doesn’t.
Your effort to diminish the harm Rolleston engaged in against black folks, by your equating it with being turned away from a hotel because you are ten bucks short of the going rate reveals a lot about your need to take the argument where common sense is not welcome.
You have admitted that a racist gas station owner ‘harms’ a black traveling family when they cannot buy gas where and when white families can.
No one has the right to harm, just because their weapon of choice is a gas station or hotel on a public road and open to the public.
I hope you can explain how practicing the peaceful religion of Islam (as confirmed by George W. Bush - the) is the same as engaging in commerce that relies on customers that travel on interstate highways.
I have never needed Islam to fill up my tank on the way to Disney World, nor have I ever taken a trip across country where I planned on staying at someone’s home where they practiced Islam.
If one were inflicting harm, (commonly known as terrorism) on non-Muslims and Muslims in the name of practicing Islam I am quite happy with the current government response to that crime.
The CRA has been in effect for fifty years, so isn’t it a bit late for more ‘slippery slope’ arguments, and specifically ones that don’t have much grounding in any kind of reality?
And you neatly put the lie to your own point; you want freedom for jerks, except they have to “conform to a universal idea”. I don’t know what you think freedom is, but it’s not that.
Really? I can erect a billboard proclaiming to all and sundry that NotfooledbyW is a rapscallion. I have harmed you, with my commerical property, and you have no legal remedy. I trust you find this to be an outrage that demands a legal remedy, yes?
That’s called a hand-wave. I know why you don’t want to consider any analogies because they make your stance look absurd, but your refusal to address them is becoming conspicuous.
“Harm” is not some catchall phrase. Not every instance of harm is actionable in criminal or civil court. The aforementioned shouted insult, the hateful billboard, the higher-than-you-can afford hotel room, they all go an an enormous list of harm that the law doesn’t get involved in, because it’s either indirect, insubstantial, or protected by the Bill of Rights. On that same list, you will find “denied service”.
Hey, point missed! You said that Rolleston’s rights weren’t violated, since he kept operating the hotel. In that case, our hypothetical Muslim’s rights weren’t violated, since he converted instead of going to jail, right?
Sorry it is you that has missed my point. Rolleston never had a right to discriminate against black people since it was his decision and his decision alone to engage in commerce that involves opening his property to the general public that travel public roads to get there.
All people on the other hand do have a right to practice whatever religion they please. You have created a hypothetical situation that does not compare to the discussion we’ve been having.
Rolleston has a Fifth Amendment right to not be deprived of his property without due process of law. As the law in question forced Rolleston to sell the use of his property, ie rent rooms, against his will, that is deprivation of property. The state is now a quasi-owner, able to use Rolleston’s property for its own purposes without due process or just compensation.
Rolleston was neither deprived of property nor deprived of income from the rooms he rents by any action of the Federal Government or the CRA Title II. Claiming a Fifth Amendment rights violation was a nice try but the Supreme Court decided it was not so.
You are wrong when you claim that Rolleston was forced to rent rooms against his will. His will was to open his property to the public to engage in commerce to make a profit.
One can’t claim a right is violated when the choice to do something is your own decision to use private property in s public way.
Your Rolleston crossed a line himself where he can’t take his hatreds.
He is still free to hate black folks all he wants, but he cannot advance his hatred to ‘harm’ by using his property to affect interstate commerce in ways that harm the group that he hates.
No one has a right to harm others except in self defence.
They were wrong. I’d examine their legal opinion, but they devoted a single sentence to the Fifth Amendment deprivation argument, which doesn’t fill one with confidence.
If the hotel were opened in 1970, maybe. But it was opened before the law was enacted. So, yes, Rolleston went from being free to walk away from transactions he didn’t want to participate in, just as his customers can, to being compelled to engage in transactions that the CRA covered, against his will.
“My” Rolleston? What does that mean? The guy was a racist asshole, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have rights.
Harm is the denial of accommodations that are available to other travelers on the sole basis of being born black. That is harm.
It is ‘your’ Rolleston because you buy his notion that he has a right to harm others just because he owns property.
You are still arguing that Black Folks traveling the great highways of this great nation of ours we’re less than equal to white travelers prior to 1970. I argue that black folks were equal to white travelers prior to 1970 and Rolleston had no right to engage in commerce and harm decent black folks because he was a racist.
The CRA did not take away a right that Rolleston had or was ever entitled to, it merely told him that from that point going forward he could not both choose to engage in commerce and harm people that he had been harming in the past.
Just because the government was late to protecting black folks in certain states from harm by racist property owners does not mean that the racists rights were infringed. They never had the right in the first place, going all the way back when property owners actual owned human beings of African descent.
The Emancipation Proclamation did not change black people from a condition of sub-human to finally bring fully human. So it was that the CRA did not change Black folks from bring unequal to the white majority traveler to equal in all manners of civil rights just because the CRA was passed in 1970.
What changed was that business owners who wished to utilize the assets of the entire community that is America could no longer commit harm to equal members of our community just because they were racist.
Wow, really? That’s specific; more so than even the CRA. Seems odd that we have this large system of civil and criminal courts, when the only harm possible is being denied accommodations on the sole basis of being black.
Care to take another stab at it?
What is harm? Clearly, Rolleston couldn’t stab someone, regardless of whether they were on his property or not. He could serve a menu they found unappetizing. Both do harm, after all.
That is not and has never been my argument. Everyone is equal before the law, no one is equal before private citizens.
But what of all the other ways he could harm them? Uncomfortable beds, rude service, high prices, giving out inaccurate directions…all legal, shockingly.
They had a Fifth Amendment right to their property from 1791 to present.
But, they can, actually. All kinds of harm. I can run a gas station where I call every customer an asshole before they leave the premises, or a restaurant where I only serve frozen and canned food. I can tell the patrons of my movie theater the endings of the movies as they take their seats. Why oh why are these harms legal?
Where did you get that my response was the ‘ONLY’ harm possible is being denied accommodations on a basis of race? But that response is harm enough except to people who would not be, nor have been a victim of that type of harm.
The ‘harm’ being prevented by the CRA is the kind of ‘harm’ that you should understand. That is because last month you wrote that ‘libertarians generally believe’ that the proper role of government is to protect the weak from being dominated by the strong.
“Libertarians generally believe that the proper role of government is to protect individuals from infringements upon their liberties. They believe that, in the absence of a government of some kind, humanity would be ruled by the law of the jungle, the strong dominating the weak.” -Human Action #023 04-03-2013 04:39 PM 092a0439.
Does your libertarian general belief about the proper role of government apply when the dominating racist hotel property owner is white and when some interstate travelers happened to be at the mercy of the law of the jungle just because they were not born of white parents like Moreton Rolleston happened to have.
Whatever could “equal **‘before’**private citizens” mean? What’s with the ‘before’ stuff?
No one has to go ‘before’ a private citizen to seek equality with anyone else who travels on a public highway.
But when a private citizen opens private property for public use to all who travel on public highways that bring desired commerce to the property it means that every potential customer must be treated equally on a first come first serve basis and as long as they have the equal and sufficient ability to pay the going rate.
The travelers are established as equal with other travelers and that equality is not in dispute.
Well, the question was “What is harm?”, that’s how. Want to try again?
I think we have wildly different ideas of what it means to infringe upon liberties, what level of harm rises to the level of malum in se as opposed to malum prohibitum, and what the “law of the jungle” looks like.
If actual, tangible harm is done - theft, bodily injury, death, destruction of property - then the government has a legitimate duty to intervene. When harm is intangible - obscenity, wounded pride, disrespect, inconvenience - then the government generally does not have a legitimate duty to intervene. What harm is done by being made to feel inferior by a hotel owner’s policy (as opposed to a government policy, ie segregation) is entirely personal and subjective. Being assaulted or stolen from is not, and thus is a matter for the courts.
“In the judgement of.” The government must treat people equally, private citizens do not. We can treat people however we feel like, within the bounds of the law.
If you want to engage in a transaction with someone, you are certainly facing their judgement. Try to rent a room while lugging a guitar and amp, or a bag of Sudafed and glass beakers, if you don’t believe me.
You stand before private citizens in this way every day. Why are you friends with some people, but not others? Isn’t that discriminatory to them? Why do you only donate to a Lutheran (or whatever) church? Why do you only root for the U.K. Wildcats (or whoever)?
You keep repeating this as an axiom, because you don’t seem to understand that it can be disagreed with. What you’ve nicely illustrated is that the CRA subjects privately-owned property to some of the same requirements for equality that our various governments are subject to. This is why I called it quasi-public; it treats Bob’s Rib Shack as though it were the Commonwealth of Virginia legislature. And it’s not like Bob gets a state senator’s salary for his trouble.
Another notion to consider is that the business about highways and interstate commerce is what allowed Congress to pass the law (it otherwise being unconstitutional on that basis), it was never meant to justify the law’s merits the way you are doing. If it weren’t for the Interstate Commerce Clause, Congress could have and would have made the law applicable to all hotels, restaurants, and such. The fact that the businesses served interstate customers was a legal necessity, not a moral one.
It’s not like Rolleston or Bob of Bob’s Rib Shack get a say in where the highways are built, or can politely ask that they be diverted so that interstate customers don’t come to their door.
QUOTE=Human Action;16287415]Well, the question was “What is harm?”, that’s how. Want to try again?
I think we have wildly different ideas of what it means to infringe upon liberties, what level of harm rises to the level of malum in se as opposed to malum prohibitum, and what the “law of the jungle” looks like.
If actual, tangible harm is done - theft, bodily injury, death, destruction of property - then the government has a legitimate duty to intervene. When harm is intangible - obscenity, wounded pride, disrespect, inconvenience - then the government generally does not have a legitimate duty to intervene. What harm is done by being made to feel inferior by a hotel owner’s policy (as opposed to a government policy, ie segregation) is entirely personal and subjective. Being assaulted or stolen from is not, and thus is a matter for the courts.
[/QUOTE]
So what you are saying now is that the government only has a legitimate duty to protect the strong white majority from the dark-skinned weak minority from trespassing on the white people’s property that they have opened to the public
selling services and commodities that are essential for interstate travel.
So tough luck for black folks in Liberteria - quit bitching because your race doesn’t have the power of wealth and property that the white majority has to make your travel as convenient as it is for whites.
The Law of the Jungle rules in Libertaria after all when the strong are white and the weak are black.
Can you seriously not tell me what “harm” means, as in harm that justifies government intervention? You’re 0 for 3 on even attempting to answer a basic, relevent, simple question that I was able to answer some time ago.
In Libertaria, you go eat at one of the many, many, many establishments that cares about money more than personal hatreds, because in Libertaria there are no segregation laws. In time, establishments that segregate based on race become as uncommon as ones that exclude women, servicemen, non-union members, gingers, or any other classification, becuase turning away customers is bad for business.
