And which accusation, among the possibly hundreds, would that be? 
Just to join in Lib’s hijack of his own thread (which is fine by me):
In Libertaria, all property is private. In America, the majority of property is private. (And most public property is in the form of national parks, national forests, and BLM lands, which rarely present a barrier to public protest.)
Now if private property enables free speech, I’m drawing a blank as to why the current supply of private property is insufficient to at least start us converging towards the Libertarian free-speech utopia, and how privatizing the streets, sidewalks, and public parks would somehow dramatically increase the abundance of free speech.
Well, there’s “official” site security, and then there’s your union goons in Market Square in Pittsburgh, tearing signs out of our hands, pushing us around, and groping some college aged women who were with me.
This happened when we mildly protested Clinton’s speech as a candidate there in 1992.
I’ve made the comment in the past that a free speech zone would have been an improvement over that treatment. What happened to us could have been prosecuted as simple assault.
For the reasons I stated above. So as long as there exist eminent domain and asset forfeiture (not to mention the power to legislate land rights and to zone), there exists no private property. Were I your magistrate, I could condemn your property, give you whatever I say it’s worth, and take it from you. Were I your magistrate, I could accuse you of a crime, seize your property, and assign to it whatever use I please. You are not an owner; you are a tenant.
Who said it would increase? I said it would be less tyrannical because even a magistrate has no say-so over what you own, so long as you conduct your affairs peacefully and honestly. You have no free speech even now; you may say whatever the law will allow you to say, and where it will allow you to say it.
Ahem…ignoring hijack…
I saw a Daily Show segment on the free speech zone, and frankly it’s very close to the Center, about as close as I think they can get without having total gridlock in that entire part of the city. I mean, the streets are really really narrow there, the Fleet Center has no windows, and the widest street anywhere near it is four lanes wide with a trolley el running down it!
I’m really trying to understand how it follows from the existence of public parks that third party candidates have trouble gaining ballot access. I’m afraid I’m stumped. I mean hell, for one thing, if there were no public parks it would be even harder for them to gather signatures. I’ve never had a political candidate or supporter come to my privately-owned residence looking for a signature on a ballot petition. I’ve been approached on public thoroughfares for signatures a number of times.
Oh, wait, I forgot to factor “Liberal/tarian is fucking batshit crazy” into my calculations.
Now it all makes sense.
I didn’t mean to say that ballot access political clout follows from public park political clout, but merely that they both are manifestations of the same thing — political clout. It is by the same reasoning that libertarians condemn the oppression of homosexuals; if a man may be oppressed for any reason, then he may be oppressed for, well, any reason.
As a generally liberal democrat, and as someone who has argued with you about many issues on the SDMB, let me be the first to say that I find what happened to you vile, inexcusable, and unAmerican. I’m ashamed that it happened at a speech given by a president for whom I voted.
Anyhow, imho, the most important point concerning “free speech zones” is that, if they are applied equally to protestors holding all opinions, then they are not some Orwellian nightmare, they are just the logistics of crowd control. It’s when they are applied only to those holding one opinion that they become something that needs to be pitted. My understanding is that the first case applies to the DNC, whereas the second case applies to the Bush appearances where pro-Bush crowds line his route, and anti-Bush crowds are somewhere else out of sight. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.
And should have been.
Physical assaults on people expressing a different political opinion are completely unacceptable, no matter who carries them out.
Since when? No Libertarian I’ve ever talked to has done so.
I don’t know about in your experience outside the boards, Otto, but Lib has been a staunch defender of Equal Rights, and Christian acceptance for homosexuals, here on the Straight Dope and on other message boards. Whether he is unique among libertarians, I don’t know.
It is not at all unique to me. A man’s sexual orientation is no business of government or anyone else, and gay people, like everyone else, should be free to pursue their own happiness in their own way. From the Libertarian Party 2004 Platform:
Come now. Standard libertarianism dictates that anyone can discriminate in any manner he or she sees fit. Government may not, but a libertarian government does very little. Private citizens can do whatever the hell they like. Refuse to rent to gays? Fine. Refuse to hire blacks? Hunky dory. Refuse to admit girls to your school? A-OK. (And remember, all schools are private.) Frankly, I don’t see how any other position can mesh with the libertarian doctrine of minimal physical coercion. You might condemn such discrimination, but you must also allow it, or else start down the slippery slope of government coercion to enforce social structure.
Of course, on the flip side, a libertarian government obviously wouldn’t have any issues with recognizing gay marriages, since any contract entered into by consenting adults is perfectly acceptable.
Yeah, in some abstract, theoretical sense (and in a world in which the people can’t rise up and vote out their government), I suppose so.
But in this world, how often does it happen that one is forced from one’s residence or place of business through eminent domain? And of those instances, what small fraction - if any - has to do with speech?
In all the years I’ve been around, and all the people I’ve known during that time, I’ve only known one person forced from their house through the power of eminent domain. And unless one assumes that they widened I-4 outside of Tampa to somehow curtail someone’s free-speech rights (damned hard to see how), it had nothing to do with speech issues.
I don’t see that at all. On my little square of property, I can say anything I please; the only problem is, how would anyone but my immediate neighbors know? And in Libertaria, they could require me to keep quiet enough that they couldn’t hear me.
Free speech in a world of only private property? Sure! I can say anything I want, under this gag. Mmmph gloomph.
You just made me significantly more interested in Libertarianism and Classical Liberalism.
True. But at the time, they were known as wild-eyed radicals. Way out of the mainstream.
OK, I’m not following you here. This sounds like you are saying that, under your proposed system, a true landowner could not be accussed or prosecuted for a crime.
How can this be?
I think that all your comments are fair, but on this one, let’s be just a bit more precise. A libertarian government does only one thing — secure the rights of its citizens. But I think that to call that “very little” is a gross mischaracterization. I’m sure that, based on the overall content of your post, you did not mean to trivialize anyone’s rights, so I just wanted to be sure that that impression was not left out there. If a government ensures that each of its citizens is free to pursue his own happiness in his own way by protecting him from the coercion of all others, then it is doing an important and significant task.
Indeed, that is the downside, and I’ll speak more to that in a bit, but first let us compare it with the downside of the alternative, especially since it isn’t even a hypothetical. It is possible, in the present system, to institutionalize discrimination. In fact, it was institutionalized for a very long time, and in many ways still is. The federal government not only recognizes race, but requires that its citizens identify to it just exactly what race they are. It is even possible to ammend the very foundation of the law — the Constitution — in such a way that discrimination is a universal legal requirement. Given sufficient political leverage, the present government may even, for example, define marriage, and prohibit by law the marriage of people who fail to meet its criteria.
Now, I often encounter the argument that our government is of, by, and for the people and is therefore responsive to the desires of the people. (See RTFirefly’s main point about people rising up and voting out their government.) We can, in the end, vote them out if they do not do our bidding. But I submit that, even given that that is true, why bother with the highly paid, politically powerful, and slow prodding middle man? If the people desire to discriminate, then the governors, according to the argument, will make that possible for them. But if they desire not to discriminate, then they must wait until the governors catch up to their will or until they can find governors who will enact their will. I submit that it is not the case that society historically has followed enlightened magistrates into a blissful social sophistication; rather, it has been the other way around. The people have had to organize, to stage demonstrations, to fight in the streets, and sometimes to die in order to get government to move. Therefore, if it is true that government acts as an agent of change on behalf of the demands of people, it seems to me to be an unnecessary entity in that regard. Why not just charge the government with ensuring that no person may be the victim of initial force or deception, and then allow people otherwise to enact their own will? If you insist that the people will elect the right politicians to do their bidding, then how can you argue that they would not do their own bidding themselves? How can they be enlightened on the one hand but clueless on the other?
Clearly, the present system is untenable for people who do not have sufficient political clout because its government is vested in the interests of people who do. So, let’s look at your concern that people in a libertarian society can freely discriminate on the basis of race, sex, or any other reason so long as they conduct their affairs peacefully and honestly. Another way of stating the concern is that people will have actual freedom of association (which the much vaunted First Ammendment allegedly guarantees in any case), and might use that freedom in what they consider to be their own best interests. But if you consider that fact, then you must consider the corollary fact that they will be acting in a free and noncoercive economy. It is in their interests to do what is financially rewarding and not what is financially punitive. If there is a significant market for people who are gay, black, or Indian (and there is), then so long as government cannot block economic competition with frivolous legislation and special favor to powerful cronies, then entrepreneurs are free to rise up and profit from the market that others are shunning. Imagine the opportunity that would await you if you were the first hotel-casino in Las Vegas that not only allowed but encouraged blacks to come in and play and stay. That’s what happened with Moulin Rouge, which became a huge success overnight at a time when discrimination was not only institutionalized, but vigorously enforced. As you know, the MR was so successful that it became almost instantly the main venue in Las Vegas for blacks and whites alike. And then suddenly, mysteriously, it closed its doors. Many people maintain (although because of the nature of political collusion, it cannot be proved) that the MR was closed on account of both official government racial prejudice and the refusal of government to guarantee the safety of its owners and patrons. The difference in a libertarian system is a significant one — what happens is that the government may not enforce discrimination, and other casino owners may not coerce or threaten the owners and patrons of the MR. Instead, to survive, what they must do is respond by opening their own doors to blacks. Sure, there will still be private clubs with snobs who want to associate only with their own kind, but there are anyway: private clubs are immune to nondiscrimination statutes. And so they should be. A man who owns a restaurant that he would like to cater to gays only ought not to have to endure people from the Christian right pushing their way onto his property solely to be jackasses who want to protest, preach, and otherwise ruin the atmosphere for his clientele.
Finally, it can be argued that even though prejudice may be legislated against in the present system, it can by no means be eliminated. All that has happened in many cases is that it has become more insidious, more hidden, and less exposed to enforcement because those who practice it have merely become more skilled in skirting the law, either by deceptively refusing to hire for reasons that they make up or else by creating token positions that they fill with people whom they have no intention of advancing. Meanwhile, the costs incurred by businesses in the hiring of attorneys and consultants that they use to insure at least the appearance of compliance punishes us all in the form of artificially high prices and limited employment opportunity. Cases where blacks have been most successful in the market are those where they have entered either as entrepreneurs or as employees of companies who genuinely were against discrimination to begin with. The owner of the new Charlotte NBA team, for example, is a self-made billionaire who became successful as a result of catering specifically to a black audience — that is, he exercised purposeful racial discrimination. He is the man who created the BET television network.
No, that’s not what it is. Asset forfeiture is the power of government to seize assets of people who are merely accused (but not prosecuted) of a crime. In a libertarian based system, a man can be accused of a crime, but his property cannot be confiscated unless he is convicted.
Ah yes, the Invisible Hand, which shall gently usher humanity into an era of acceptance and equality, without ever pushing anyone to do something they don’t want to.
Or not.
You vastly overestimate the extent to which greed outweighs prejudice in the human mind. Or perhaps it’s just that prejudice blinds people to opportunities to satisfy their greed. Either way, the Invisible Hand is bullshit.