Sure I have. Raised in Waco, Texas, born in 1948, you bet I did. Also saw the sign in the bus my grandfather drove, “Colored will move to the rear of the bus.” Didn’t think anything of it, didn’t know any better. I do now.
By which you want to elevate such property rights as equal to, or superior to, human and civil rights. You are welcome to such dogma, but that’s all it is, a statement of political faith, that surpasseth all understanding.
This land is my land, yours as well, ours. We, the people. Private property takes place with this fundamental fact as a backdrop, as the environment in which private property takes place. No one is permitted to use private property as an excuse to do harm to us all, and degrading human rights does such harm, and need not be accepted simply because of private property rights.
Similarly, if a road would benefit us all, and must go through your property, your property rights are subject to suspension, for the higher good. The collective well being of the people is first and foremost, such dignities and privileges as private property may bestow are conditional.
Actually, I am opposed, although I don’t lose any sleep over it. However, we needn’t treat homes and restaurants exactly the same. All we’re really arguing about where we draw the line-- and there isn’t some objectively determinable place to draw that line.
BTW, I’ve gotten food poisoning from restaurants twice, even with the inspections we have.
Really? You’re really opposed to health inspections of restaurants?
Wow. I say again that it is this kind of thing that renders libertarianism impotent as an American political force.
And peope still die in car crashes, despite seatbelt laws or in airplane crashes despite safety checks and regulations. Therefore, they are ineffective and can be reduced to mere suggestions rather than mandates.
Have you ever visited Mexico, or a borderline 3rd world part of Southern Europe, or Africa, or a lonely outpost in the north of Canada?
Did you fast and/or starve whilst you were there? If not, how did you bring yourself to go to a restaurant, or buy something else to eat, without the FDA inspecting the food? How did you bring yourself to buy anything to eat at all without the US government’s approval?
Ever had Montezuma’s Revenge? Delhi Belly? Anything else with a name like that?
There’s a reason there are standard jokes about those things in the kinds of places you’re referring to, but not in industrialized countries with big, oppressive, tyrannical governments.
I once got dysentery in Mexico. It was OK, though, because I preferred the freedom of private enterprise to my health. I sat on the toilet and read Ayn Rand.
Libertarianism is a unique solution to the illegal immigration issue. We can just make the US as bad as Mexico and they will stop coming.
I’m beginning to think that, despite his name, Rand is not a very good libertarian. Maybe the government shouldn’t be stepping in in a libertopia, but the aggrieved parties should certainly be able to sue the ass off of the mining company if they were negligent (and by reputation, it seems they most likely were, though we can wait for a court to determine that).
I’m a little confused by some of Sam Stone’s examples of why government is bad.
We look at Jim Crow laws, where local government would look the other way while citizens committed murder and arson on each other, and are told this is an example of why government is bad. He also brought up the example of the BP oil spill, and told this is a failure of government. And I don’t disagree with that. But what I’m not seeing is how these argue for less government. How would less government have prevented the Klan from terrorizing the South for so many decades? How would less government have prevented unsafe oil rig conditions?
The same, I suppose, goes for John Mace’s food poisoning example, although with a slight alteration. John, in your forty or so years of eating at restaurants, you’ve gotten food poisoning twice. How often do you think you would have suffered food poisoning in that same span of time if there were no government health regulations?
Point being, no one is suggesting that government is a perfect solution. But at least it’s a solution. You both seem to be taking the position that, since government can’t function effectively at all times, then it can’t function effectively at any time. Since you’re both smart guys - probably smarter than me - I have to assume I’m misreading you in some fashion. But that’s the idea I’m coming away with from your posts, and I’m not finding it particularly persuasive.
So you don’t really care if the places where you eat are refrigerating their meat properly, or allowing rats to frolic in the kitchen?
How about fire inspectors? Do you care if theaters or bars you go to have enough exits in case of a emergency? Or if those exits are blocked or clear? Or is that another unfair government intrusion on the rights of property owners?
How about building codes? Is it unfair of the government to order property owners to reinforce their buildings so they don’t fall down in an earthquake? After all, if you don’t think a restaurant looks sturdy enough, no one is FORCING you to patronize it. You can always walk next door to the more expensive restaurant with the reinforced walls, right? And I’m sure if enough people boycott the restaurants that aren’t sturdy enough, they’ll all go out of business … .
Blame game? What an idiot. I imagine Rand gowing up with his father,
“Rand, did you eat those cookies your mom made for the school bake sale?”
“Are you seriuous? Yes I ate them, but stuff happens. Why must you resort to this blame game of yours? Liberty means I should have the right to take those cookies and if mom doesn’t like it she can stop making cookies. Am I right? Isn’t that what you taught me?”
This is common with smart people who are used to pushing an idea to it’s extreme. “Well, if I drop this cannon ball it falls at the same speed as a smaller cannon ball, maybe everything falls at the same speed despite what it weighs. And maybe the earth behaves just like a big cannon ball”. Things like human behavior are not as predictable or rational. On first approximation, rationally you would serve everyone at your lunch counter because you would have more customers. Dig a little deeper and you see that you might drive away your existing customers if you acted unilaterally to desegregate, and maybe some people just hate minorities more than they like money.
There is a middle ground between the ends *always *justifying the means and the ends *never *justifying the means.
You mean like the “blame game” of complaining that the media meanies kept pressing you to answer questions and reporting on what you said? That “blame game”?
Now he is accusing MSNBC of lieing when they reported that he would not say whether he would have voted for the Civil Rights Act. And he now says he would have voted for it, even though he refused to say so when asked directly by Maddow. Conservatives will just see him as a victim like Palin.
It most certainly does. If he’s so blinded by ideology that he doesn’t see as significant the enormous practical impact of that particular legislation on ensuring equality for black people, then he’s a racist. His personal feelings about black people, whatever they might be, are irrelevant. He’d sacrifice the gains made by that legislation in order to serve his ideology – in terms of the impact on black people themselves, that makes him entirely equivalent to the person who’d refuse to serve them in the first place. Maybe even worse in today’s world, since he’s closer to having the power to make it happen.
What in blazes do my putative travel choices regarding third world countries have to do with the question of the supremacy of property rights over human rights?
The fact that I can be poisoned in a foreign eatery only reinforces my pleasure at my own country’s regulation of the food industry.
Whether I have sufficient reason to visit those places to over-ride my concerns for the safety of my diet while there is not germane to the discussion.