I didn’t say his position was being misrepresented. I said some criticism isn’t taking into account the full interview.
This would have been a good response but he still doesn’t say “yes” or “no” and I believe Maddow would have still tried to hammer away at him.
This is pretty much the view of people against same-sex marriage.
Ultimately, this is where I disagree with Paul. Most of the time I believe libertarian ideals can work but we need to be flexible and identify areas where it can’t.
I fail to see how posters not emphasizing his repeated statements to that effect constitutes any misrepresentation. As for him not doing it well, that is a value judgment. I believe that to be a poor position, and his inability to defend it stems from its own hollow basis.
Again, I don’t think there is anything significant that has been omitted.
Projecting? In 2010 in most urban areas where racial issues are not king, there is very little danger of latent racism as race mixing and more is common place there. It’s not like the former Yugoslavia where ancestral hatreds can be rekindled. In most urban areas I have lived in people are so at ease with each other, color is a noon issue. There is racism to be sure, but very little real deep latent racism that would cause people to segregate.
Believe it or not, lots more urban Americans see racial differences as defining characteristics.
I have so many black and brown friends that if a place was white only, I would not go there not because of the stupid discrimination, but because my friends could not go with me.
your view (projections) is that most people, yourself included, see race as a factor deciding who one would hang out with. that may be true where you live and with you.
Most of his personal qualifiers about how personally offensive, terrible and downright no good he considers racist behavior as a personal moral and social choice have been omitted, and IMO rightfully so, as they are extraneous to his support for the right of businesses to discriminate against any classes at will.
This cements my view that you are quite young and very suburban in your worldview. The river of latent racism in the US running through the middle aged white working classes, and even many economic elites is deep, cold and strong. Only a young, white economically and demographically privileged elite could be oblivious to this.
One of the problems I have with the civil rights act is that, at least in the public consciousness it made government the savior, and business the demon. Now we look back on it and think, “Good thing the government came along and passed those laws restricting businesses from discriminating against blacks! Government is a force for good!”
What this does, however, is completely whitewash government’s involvement in the discrimination and subjugation of blacks all the way up to the civil rights era - and beyond.
I already pointed out that the ‘back of the bus’ rule that Rosa Parks fought against was taking place on public transit - and government did nothing to prevent it.
Ask yourself this - how did Chinese people manage to both retain their own culture and find a place in the American economy, without the help of government? In the 1800’s, the Chinese were treated extremely poorly - maybe even more poorly than blacks. They were used as fodder for the most dangerous jobs, paid a pittance, refused entry into ‘white’ businesses, etc. So how did that stop? And why didn’t the same thing happen for blacks?
Chinese discrimination stopped because the Chinese used the market against their discriminators. They created their own businesses, serving mainly Chinese people, and those businesses robbed the ‘white’ businesses of customers. Not only that, but they created products and services that white people wanted, which forced the two to integrate over time.
Why didn’t blacks do the same thing? Blacks had a lot of market power, after all. What stopped them from setting up black-owned businesses catering to the needs of black people? Had they done that, and stopped buying their goods from white businesses, very quickly the white businesses would have had to change their tune regarding the treatment of blacks - or at least, blacks would have developed their own economies so they didn’t need racist white people to deal with - much like most large cities still have Chinatowns, little Italys, and other ethnic regions that serve the needs of their people.
One of the reasons this didn’t work for blacks was because a black-owned business was subject to violence. White people who shopped their were threatened. Any black who successfully competed against a white person was under threat.
Now, under segregation (a government policy), keeping blacks and whites apart was the law of the land. Blacks could and did open their own businesses, but the rules of segregation meant they couldn’t compete against white businesses, and they found it very difficult to get the intermediate products and services they needed to grow their businesses. And again, if they got too big and actually posed a threat to the white power structure, they were often firebombed and the people who defended them lynched.
After Brown v the Board of Education ended school segregation, the county government shut down the entire public school system, freezing out blacks from education (white kids went to a parallel ‘private’ system set up by the community explicitly to throw a wrench into desegregation - an option not made available to the black community).
And so it goes. Many of the reasons blacks were kept out of economic life were the direct result of government laws (Jim Crow laws, anyone?), government discrimination against blacks, refusal of governments to enforce laws protecting blacks from violence and intimidation, and flat-out refusal by racist government agents to uphold the laws already on the books.
But when people turned to the government to ‘fix’ racism, of course the government didn’t blame itself. Instead, businesses became the scapegoat, and history was rewritten to downplay the government’s role.
You can imagine other ways this could have gone. The government could have policed itself better. It could have made laws that severely punished government agents who refused to implement the law on an even basis. It could have implemented official no-discrimination policies in all government spaces - including public transit - and fired public officials who didn’t enforce them. Hell, it could have put police officers on buses to protect black people if it needed to.
Going further, it could have helped blacks set up businesses through tax advantages or other inducements, and heavily protected those businesses from violence. It could have put federal purchasing guidelines in place that excluded any business that discriminated against blacks or other minorities. There was a host of reforms that could have taken place which would have helped end systematic racism without trampling the rights of citizens and without creating inner city disaster zones and other problems of big government which have ultimately hurt the black community.
I didn’t say you made a judgment on it, but…
Yes you do "make it sound like…those having “‘extra’ or ‘protected’ status” somehow having an unequal “advantage.” You may not mean to, but you do.
Where you are “pointing out that people already can discriminate with their business - except specifically against protected classes.” you are saying all men could be discriminated against, if only for the ‘protected’ status of minorities (We are talking about minorities, no?). Take away the special protections for minorities and we are all potentially discriminated against equally.
Only somebody ashamed of or denying they discriminate based on race would be defensive.
We are discussing discrimination based on race. Not being "free to discriminate on every criteria "
The concepts of a home and a public business are not the same.
Your comparisons are unequal (sorry for the pun). Who you invite into your own home is a private matter. Who you deny service to is a public matter.
Refusing to allow a black or brown tradesman to work on your house would be a private matter. you are not licensed to allow entry into your own home. You do not ask societal permission to spend your money. A store owner who refuses to service others is asking society for permission to make money – a license.
You reading the same posts as I am?
I tend to agree with your characterization of Libertarians, but I did know someone who tried to walk the talk. Among other things he would pay the bus fare along with what he decided the subsidy by the state was; e.g, he’d put in $5 for a $2 ride.
I never said anything was misrepresented. And I’m not going to get into another debate about libertarian policy, especially with someone who announces in advance that it is “hollow”.
Well, I disagree. I think what I posted about what he said was significant.
This is nonsense. I said “protected classes” because that’s what the law says. It’s faster to say protected classes than saying discrimination based on age, creed, nationality, religion, etc. etc.
My point in even bringing it up in the first place is that we generally concede that a business owner has control over his business - that he can discriminate by your attitude, your clothes, your hairstyle, even kicking out every third person for no reason. We concede the power to discriminate for a business owner generally, it’s just that it’s only legal for specific protected cases like race/religion/etc.
Bullshit. She was trying to get him into a “yes, businesses should be allowed to ban blacks” soundbite, and that’s why he was defensive. Again, many people do not conceptually understand the concept of not being racist and yet not supporting laws which prevent private businesses from discriminated against protected classes. So for an unsophisticated audience, she was trying to make it sound like he was pro-segregation.
Right, the libertarian philosophy here allows discrimination on every criteria. You can say “you advocate allowing discrimination based on race!” and that implies the intent on desiring racial discrimination, when it’s more accurate to say that you advocate allowing businesses to discriminate based on whatever criteria they see fit. Including, but not especially limited to, racial discrimination.
But this isn’t some intrinsic aspect of the nature of reality, it’s a social construct. We decide how much businesses are treated like home, what the property owner is allowed to do. Rand advocates a change in policy so that businesses are more under control of the property owner.
Not quite true. National City Lines owned the Montgomery Bus Line at the time of the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
Government was the good guy. You are masking the distinctions between local, state and national government. Rosa Parks and civil rights leaders fought local and state governments and sometimes national government. But only a complete moron would argue it was not the federal government that ushered in racial equality – sometimes at the point of a gun. Jim Crow was daring the federal government to act.
Free middle class blacks did the same thing in northern cities. Did you know that? Yep, places like Boston and New York had thriving middle class black neighborhoods – doctors, lawyers, etc…
you are officially off teh reservation
wow!
I gave up a long time ago. If you were only as honest as you are ignorant.
I should make myself clearer about black-owned businesses vs Chinese businesses, because I didn’t quite get my point across.
There’s an old saying that goes something like, “When trade crosses a border, tanks don’t.” Countries that become economically entwined tend not to go to war against each other, because destroying the other side’s economy destroys your own.
The same is true of discrimination. The great thing about markets is that they encourage people to work together out of their own self-interest. And when people work together, they develop social and economic bonds that tie them more closely and foster understanding.
The Chinese who opened businesses would often serve anyone - the Chinese laundry is a stereotype, but it’s an example of what I’m talking about. The same thing happened with immigrants from other countries - Jews, Italians, Japanese, you name it. All of them suffered discrimination, but they all rose above it and established their own niches in American economic life.
But the blacks and the natives have had a hard time of it. The biggest reason is because they were segregated. Blacks could start businesses, but it was hard for them to reach out to white clientele, or get support from white businesses (you can open a blacks-only auto shop, but what are you going to do when the white-owned parts supplier won’t sell you parts because he’s worried about violent recriminations from other whites while the sheriff looks the other way?). And if blacks did manage to create a business that competed against local white businesses in successful fashion, it would find its supplies drying up or would be subject to outright violence.
The same happened to natives, here in Canada and in the U.S. In both cases, they were shuffled onto reservations, and given enough subsidies to keep them quiet - and to keep them from striving to achieve. We isolated them from trade, institutionalized poverty, provided them with crappy schools, and ignored them.
But look what’s happened in recent years - the native American bands have found an economic niche - casinos. Because their placement on reservations gave them some isolation from federal regulation, they could open casinos when others could not. These aren’t casinos catering to natives - they’re casinos catering mostly to white people. The result is that native Americans and native Canadians have seen their wealth and political power grow (the Indian bands are now the biggest lobbyists in Washington). They’ve taken their wealth and used it to improve their schools and start other businesses. This has caused them to gain stature and respect, and to reduce discrimination (in Canada, discrimination against natives has declined dramatically in the last twenty years).
So here’s a case where the American Native populations have had a certain civil rights revolution of their own - only in this case it happened because of a lack of government regulation.
I’ve met that kind. phht!
I knew families that benefited from government subsidies, loans and programs. I used to ask libertarians who grew up in those families if they felt they owed something back to society. Some times people benefit a generation later; that later generation can deceptively say they did not benefit from government aid.
I recently asked people who grew up on welfare and in a housing project how they could rant against socialism. these people are all grown up and their families had lived in the housing for varying amounts of time. The welfare was limited in years or generations in their families. One answer addressed ‘commie’ style welfare…the Obama kind. LOL
Then I apologize. I’ll get back to you.
That’s because government is a tool, a means to an end. Racism did not begin with the government, it began with the people who formed or became members of the government. Then, either those people changed their minds or were replaced by new people who held different views. And how has history been rewritten to downplay the government’s role to instead blame businesses? The 3/5ths compromise, slavery, Plessy v. Ferguson, Jim Crow laws, and segregation have not disappeared or been whitewashed from school or history textbooks.
Yeah, but it was under contract to the city, was it not? It’s very common for public transit to be subcontracted out to private companies who own and maintain the buses, but as long as the businesses were being run on behalf of the city, the city had every opportunity to demand an end to discrimination on the buses. At the very least, it could threaten to find another provider or create a public bus ownership program of its own.
But if I’m wrong on the details of that, and it truly was a privately owned and operated bus line that had nothing to do with the government, received no subsidies or public contracts, then I’ll retract that example.
I can only hope that devotion to this principle spreads from libertarians to the Tea Party, thence to the Republican party and outward to conservatives in general, and they all refuse to compromise on this ideal whenever they are asked about it.