Althouse: "What makes Rand Paul’s position... noteworthy is that it’s a pure, unadulterated expression of Lockean anti-statism with little admixture of Hobbesian sentiments at all."

May 26, 2010

"What makes Rand Paul’s position... noteworthy is that it’s a pure, unadulterated expression of Lockean anti-statism with little admixture of Hobbesian sentiments at all."

"Paul, like many libertarians and Tea Party activists, is so obsessed with the possibility that the state might commit an injustice that he’s indifferent to the reality of actually existing injustice at the hands of private citizens. As far as these radical Lockeans are concerned, the former is tyranny, pure and simple, while the latter is just life: yeah, it’s sometimes unfair, but freedom requires that we (or rather, in this case, blacks living under Jim Crow in the South) get over it."

136 comments:

Scott said...: The media is desperate to smear Rand Paul as a racist because he is a libertarian. This is beyond despicable.; 5/26/10, 10:13 AM
Fen said...: Wolf! Wolf! Wolf!; 5/26/10, 10:17 AM
rhhardin said...: They're usually called Jim Crow laws, necessary because people would opt otherwise without them.; 5/26/10, 10:17 AM
ricpic said...: John Locke was not anti-state. But why interject any historical reality into a liberal's fevered misrepresentation of our heritage?; 5/26/10, 10:24 AM
traditionalguy said...: How did Rand Paul become an official Libertarian and not a standard issue toxic narcissist spawn of the John Birch Society? One has to watch where his belt buckle moves to while he head fakes to the Tea Party revolt that he just just wants more liberty like them and volunteers to be be their leader selected by the MSM.; 5/26/10, 10:27 AM
Anonymous said...: ...freedom requires that we (or rather, in this case, blacks living under Jim Crow in the South) get over it."

*sigh*

No, nobody's being asked to get over anything. That's not even a part of the deal. Instead, racist ideas, speech and practices are weighed against all others and found wanting by free citizens.

Why is this so difficult?; 5/26/10, 10:28 AM
Anonymous said...: What the article fails to even note is the possibility that injustices—including ones imposed by the State, such as the Jim Crow laws—are most often and most successfully overcome by the sometimes agonizingly slow and messy process of people changing their minds. The Libertarian position is merely that sometimes there are specific social injustices, such as racism, and that such injustices are usually best resolved through private action by voluntary participation in civic institutions, but government mandates always constitute some loss of liberty. So we should be extremely careful in judging that any given injustice is only amenable to governmental correction.; 5/26/10, 10:28 AM
YoungHegelian said...: TNR's historical example has a bit of a problem from a libertarian viewpoint --- Jim Crow was state sponsered discrimination. No libertarian would support Jim Crow.

Paul has said as much many times now in interviews, but such jesuitical distinctions seem beyond the ken of his liberal critics.

It's strange that the left sees the civil rights struggle as it happened as a untarnished moral victory. 8 out of 10 births in the black community are out of wedlock.

White America's good intentions may be as damaging as its hatred.; 5/26/10, 10:29 AM
former law student said...: The media is desperate to smear Rand Paul as a racist because he is a libertarian.

No one thinks that Rand Paul's a racist. Rand Paul's ideas can be used to justify racist practices, however.; 5/26/10, 10:31 AM
Unknown said...: I love this, "Paul, like many libertarians and Tea Party activists, is so obsessed with the possibility that the state might commit an injustice that he’s indifferent to the reality of actually existing injustice at the hands of private citizens...".

Somebody ought to show these clowns the Constitution of the United States, the Bill of Rights, and the Federalist Papers with a detailed explanation of how and why they all came to be.

I'd ask if they never heard of them, but we all know the answer to that.; 5/26/10, 10:33 AM
former law student said...: with a detailed explanation of how and why they all came to be.

Read Madison's Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787. Here's one example:

The Report of the Committee of eleven [see friday the 24th. instant] being taken up,

Genl. PINKNEY moved to strike out the words "the year eighteen hundred" as the year limiting the importation of slaves, and to insert the words "the year eighteen hundred and eight"

Mr. GHORUM 2ded. the motion

Mr. MADISON. Twenty years will produce all the mischief that can be apprehended from the liberty to import slaves. So long a term will be more dishonorable to the National5 character than to say nothing about it in the Constitution.

On the motion; which passed in the affirmative.

N. H. ay. Mas. ay. Ct. ay. N. J. no. Pa. no. Del. no. Md. ay. Va. no. N. C. ay. S. C. ay. Geo. ay.6

Mr. Govr. MORRIS was for making the clause read at once, "7 importation of slaves into N. Carolina, S. Carolina & Georgia shall not be prohibited &c." This he said would be most fair and would avoid the ambiguity by which, under the power with regard to naturalization, the liberty reserved to the States might be defeated. He wished it to be known also that this part of the Constitution was a compliance with those States. If the change of language however should be objected to by the members from those States, he should not urge it.

Col: MASON was not against using the term "slaves" but agst. naming N. C. S. C. & Georgia, lest it should give offence to the people of those States.

Mr. SHERMAN liked a description better than the terms proposed, which had been declined by the old Congs. & were not pleasing to some people.

Mr. CLYMER concurred with Mr. Sherman

Mr. WILLIAMSON said that both in opinion & practice he was against slavery; but thought it more in favor of humanity, from a view of all circumstances, to let in S. C. & Georgia on those terms, than to exclude them from the Union.

Mr. Govr. MORRIS withdrew his motion.

Mr. DICKENSON wished the clause to be confined to the States which had not themselves prohibited the importation of slaves, and for that purpose moved to amend the clause so as to read "The importation of slaves into such of the States as shall permit the same shall not be prohibited by the Legislature of the U- S- until the year 1808"-which was disagreed to nem: cont:8

The first part of the report was then agreed to, amended as follows.

"The migration or importation of such persons as the several States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Legislature prior to the year 1808."

N. H. Mas. Con. Md. N. C. S. C. Geo: ay9; 5/26/10, 10:42 AM
bagoh20 said...: The two extreme boogeymen are a totalitarian state on one side and a night watchman state on the other.

One has killed tens of millions in the last 50 years and the other never existed.

I think that the side with the totalitarianism in it's closet needs to develop a little humility on the subject and do some listening to rather than mocking of the vastly less murderous ideology.; 5/26/10, 10:49 AM
Freder Frederson said...: It's strange that the left sees the civil rights struggle as it happened as a untarnished moral victory. 8 out of 10 births in the black community are out of wedlock.

So are you saying that blacks were better off when they knew their place and had wise, benevolent white folks taking care of them and making sure that they behaved properly?

No wonder libertarians often are confused with unreformed racists. The arguments you use to support your positions are just appallingly racist.; 5/26/10, 10:51 AM
AlphaLiberal said...: Republicans dislike any talk about racism -- unless it's them accusing someone of being a racist. Like, say, Obama or Sotomayor.

Otherwise, they don't give a rat's ass about racism and will deny it even exists, let alone the harm and injustice it causes.

(Oh, right, they don't like social justice, either).; 5/26/10, 10:52 AM
AlphaLiberal said...: bagoh20 says some outrageous shit:

I think that the side with the totalitarianism in it's closet needs to develop a little humility on the subject and do some listening to rather than mocking of the vastly less murderous ideology. .

Are you really saying that liberals are responsible for the crimes of communism and Nazism?; 5/26/10, 10:54 AM
AlphaLiberal said...: Edutcher, most conservatives don't know what is in the Constitution. They seem to have a stronger preference for the Confederate Constitution.; 5/26/10, 10:55 AM
AlphaLiberal said...: Bagoh20 keeps up with the delusions:

One has killed tens of millions in the last 50 years and the other never existed. .

this is a vaguely written but it also seems to be your contention that "injustice at the hands of private citizens" never existed.

That statement is plainly ignorant of history.; 5/26/10, 10:57 AM
Freder Frederson said...: The Libertarian position is merely that sometimes there are specific social injustices, such as racism, and that such injustices are usually best resolved through private action by voluntary participation in civic institutions, but government mandates always constitute some loss of liberty.

Too bad the Libertarian position (like most libertarian positions) has almost no real-world examples it can cite where this is actually the case.; 5/26/10, 10:58 AM
Pastafarian said...: Alpha, I don't know what it's like in your universe, but in mine, the Secessionists were Democrats, and the Republicans were...Republicans.

Also, in my universe, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was opposed most strenuously by Democrats.; 5/26/10, 10:59 AM
AlphaLiberal said...: Scott:

The media is desperate to smear Rand Paul as a racist because he is a libertarian. This is beyond despicable. .

Yeah, poor Rand Paul. Just because he said private companies should be free to practice racism, people think that's bad.

Rand Paul only wants to prohibit racism from the public sector. And he wants the public sector to be very very small.

The real world impact of this Libertarian world view is to maximize and allow racism.

I don't know what is in his heart but the policies he espouses allow racism to flourish.; 5/26/10, 11:00 AM
Damon said...: Freder Frederson - "So are you saying that blacks were better off when they knew their place and had wise, benevolent white folks taking care of them and making sure that they behaved properly?"

YoungHegelian never said that or insinuated that. If you are going to comment on a specific post please take the time to read it and do not misconstrue it.

The comment said that federal intervention (Hobbesian solution) into civil rights has not worked out so well for those it was supposed to help.; 5/26/10, 11:00 AM
Scott said...: "Are you really saying that liberals are responsible for the crimes of communism and Nazism?"

Communism and Nazism aren't crimes as much as philosophies, born of the same notion that a state run by an elite will make better choices than free people acting in self interest.

So yeah, commies, Nazis, and liberals belong in the same bucket.; 5/26/10, 11:01 AM
bagoh20 said...: "Are you really saying that liberals are responsible for the crimes of communism and Nazis?"

Not liberals. JFK was a liberal. I knew liberals and you are no liberal. You and those who mock libertarians are statists. And you left out the Chinese communists in your question.

And yes, the truth is outrageous.; 5/26/10, 11:04 AM
AlphaLiberal said...: Pastafarian:

Also, in my universe, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was opposed most strenuously by Democrats. .

Actually, the true dividing line was by region. The Southerners opposed it.

But some Democrats like Strom Thurmond, did oppose it. Strom Thurmond who, like so many other Dixecrats LEFT the Democratic Party for the Republican Party.

Actually, they were driven from the Democratic Party. And they set up shop in the Republican Party where the GOP used the racially divisive "Southern Strategy" to win white votes.

So your argument is pretty dishonest.; 5/26/10, 11:07 AM
bagoh20 said...: "your contention that "injustice at the hands of private citizens" never existed.

That statement is plainly ignorant of history."

Site me an example to match what was done by the state in Nazi Germany, the USSR, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, etc.; 5/26/10, 11:07 AM
Roger J. said...: Rand Paul seems to have attracted the same slobbering frothing resentment as did Sarah Palin. That said, the Atlantic article with respect to Thomas Hobbes and John Locke was written by someone who had the cliff notes version of Leviathan and the second treatise. Both thinkers, who in my judgment are the predecessors to our republic (not counting Marsilio of Padua) were not nearly as far apart that the Atlantic asserts--Probably the Atlanic author did not bother to read the later writings of Hobbes (notably "a dialogue between a philosopher and student of the common laws of england")

Both Hobbes and Locke (as did Rousseau) start from the situation of man in a state of nature--they differ only in the results of that state, and then not so much. It would do well to read the original writings--they are indeed timeless and not nearly the caricatures that the Atlantic asserts.; 5/26/10, 11:07 AM
AlphaLiberal said...: Scott:

Also, in my universe, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was opposed most strenuously by Democrats.

Please brush up on your reading comprehension. I did not say they are crimes. I said the "crimes of..."; 5/26/10, 11:08 AM
bagoh20 said...: It's also instructional to realize that slavery and Jim Crow were also enforced by the state. There was individual racism, but the real damage is done when the state takes sides against it's citizens.; 5/26/10, 11:09 AM
Scott M said...: Are you really saying that liberals are responsible for the crimes of communism and Nazism?

That's not what he's saying at all, hence the "in it's closet" quip. He's saying that the left in this country, with their embrace of expanding government, is much closer to totalitarianism than the limited government crowd. However, since you pretty much proved yesterday that you either have no idea what you're talking about or choose to put words in people mouths, it should be much of a stretch for you to come to the conclusion you did.

but it also seems to be your contention that "injustice at the hands of private citizens" never existed

Of course it existed and continues to exist. In fact, despite the lack of any organized movement, individual black on black crime is at an all time high. However, even those shocking (for the more sheltered of us out there) numbers absolutely pail in comparison to the numbers racked up by mass murdering regimes who achieved power on the shoulders of socialism.

Really...where the hell is your A-game?; 5/26/10, 11:11 AM
Pastafarian said...: I'm a Republican, not a Libertarian; and I don't think that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 should be repealed.

But I think you're mischaracterizing the argument against it, Alpha.

The argument is one made on principal: The fact that these laws' constitutionality depended upon the infinitely elastic commerce clause makes one think that things weren't really done the way they should have been.

That is: The goal of the act was good, but the method was foul, in that it opened the door for an ever-expanding government. If you want the federal government to have the power to force restauranteurs to serve anyone regardless of race, then amend the constitution so that the absurd application of the commerce clause isn't required to legally justify it.

Now, at this point, the damage to the Constitution has been done, and there's no reason to go back and rechew this food. And in fact, I haven't heard anyone, even Paul, advocate for overturning the Civil Rights Act. It's just a matter of Democrats trying to make political hay by asking absurd hypotheticals.

But since you like hypotheticals:

Suppose I asked you, Alpha, if you would have assassinated Hitler in 1934, given the chance. If you thought about this, and realized that WWII might still have occurred, and that the Germans might have won had they not been led by such an idiotic maniac as Hitler, you might just say "No." (You'd probably say yes, as most would, but let's suppose you say no).

Would I be justified in screaming "Antisemite!!!"???; 5/26/10, 11:13 AM
Scott M said...: Actually, they were driven from the Democratic Party. And they set up shop in the Republican Party where the GOP used the racially divisive "Southern Strategy" to win white votes.

So your argument is pretty dishonest.

So is yours if you don't acknowledge the Democrats don't do the same exact thing for black, latino, and females voters every four years.

Is your kid logging in using your password or something?; 5/26/10, 11:14 AM
bagoh20 said...: Individuals often treat each other miserably, but when you give some of them the power of a state, you just magnify that tendency. The state is not some neutral entity only interested in doing good. That's the delusion that is really dangerous.; 5/26/10, 11:14 AM
paul a'barge said...: Not bad for a guy writing for one of the biggest Hobbesian outfits on Earth.

Here is my quibble:
As far as these radical Lockeans are concerned, the former is tyranny, pure and simple, while the latter is just life: yeah, it’s sometimes unfair, but freedom requires that we (or rather, in this case, blacks living under Jim Crow in the South) get over it.

Unfortunately, the folks at TNR believe this:
As far as these radical Hobbesians are concerned, blacks living under Jim Crow in the South is tyranny, pure and simple, while an injustice perpetrated by The State is just life: yeah, it’s sometimes unfair, but Socialism requires that we get over it.

Repeat after me: The ends justifies the means; 5/26/10, 11:16 AM
paul a'barge said...: Oh by the way .... Rand Paul is a moron.

He's even more of a moron than his father.

Mark my words, the Tea Party will rue the day they chose Rand Paul to carry their standard. Rand Paul is going to set us all back light years.; 5/26/10, 11:18 AM
Roger J. said...: Oops--apologies--I said Atlantic when I meant TNR.; 5/26/10, 11:18 AM
Freder Frederson said...: Now, at this point, the damage to the Constitution has been done, and there's no reason to go back and rechew this food. And in fact, I haven't heard anyone, even Paul, advocate for overturning the Civil Rights Act. It's just a matter of Democrats trying to make political hay by asking absurd hypotheticals.

Actually, nobody asked Paul "absurd hypotheticals". Check the transcripts. Palin was just making shit up (as usual) when she accused interviewers of asking "absurd hypotheticals".; 5/26/10, 11:20 AM
Opus One Media said...: I'm not sure Paul has read much Locke. It is clear that some parts of his (Dr. Paul's) mind have yet to be written on while others are caked with chalk or perhaps charcoal.

Scott said...
"The media is desperate to smear Rand Paul as a racist because he is a libertarian. This is beyond despicable."

Proving that Locke's observations are mainly correct and a another blank slate offers nothing to the discussion.; 5/26/10, 11:21 AM
Freder Frederson said...: There was individual racism, but the real damage is done when the state takes sides against it's citizens.

Yeah, 5000 lynchings didn't do much damage at all.; 5/26/10, 11:23 AM
Roger J. said...: HD--I absolutely missed your point--yes, Locke's theory of psychology started with the concept of the tabula rasa--just what are you saying? In english please. You would do well to argue as well as did Locke; 5/26/10, 11:24 AM
miller said...: "The state is not some neutral entity only interested in doing good. That's the delusion that is really dangerous."

That is probably one of the most important statements about life and politics ever made.; 5/26/10, 11:24 AM
Scott M said...: "The state is not some neutral entity only interested in doing good. That's the delusion that is really dangerous."

That is probably one of the most important statements about life and politics ever made.

...and why the position taken by our Constitutional-Scholar-In-Chief that the Constitution is flawed because it's a document of negative rights is particularly troubling.; 5/26/10, 11:26 AM
traditionalguy said...: Once more, why are we debating over the segregation ending MLK lead non-violent movement and a courageous Civil Rights act that is 46 years old? That is the worst single issue to have debated among GOP voters watched by the swing voting independents. Are we insane and gone suicidal politically? Or did we just kick our first foot into a Ron and Rand Paul designed trap. What will they use against us next?; 5/26/10, 11:27 AM
bagoh20 said...: Do people really believe that without the 64 act we would still be living with Jim Crow. I just don't see that. The act was in response to changing attitudes already happening very rapidly. The law didn't cause them. We may have had discrimination continuing longer in some parts of the country, but by today it would be gone and I think blacks would have far less dependency and the associated crime and poverty that it brings. That's at least arguable and not some kind of blasphemy.; 5/26/10, 11:27 AM
Pastafarian said...: paul, I tend to agree about Paul's being a moron. I'm not sure that the Tea Party ever picked him. He's the Republican Party nominee, and he represents very few Republicans.

Freder, asking someone how they would have voted on something that was voted on before they were ever born is absurd. Ask him how he WILL vote on something that's likely to come up in his term.

The Democrats are just focusing on an easy target. In the meantime, oil flows toward the Louisiana marshes (because we just can't drill in pristine Alaska, on land, where such a leak would have been plugged within hours); North Korea is pissing all over South Korea; and the financial system is teetering on the brink of Mad-Max-style apocalypse.

But let's be sure to ask people how they would have voted on something that happened half a century ago.; 5/26/10, 11:27 AM
Freder Frederson said...: YoungHegelian never said that or insinuated that. If you are going to comment on a specific post please take the time to read it and do not misconstrue it.

Well damn if I can figure out what he (or you for that matter) means by tying the illegitimacy rate of blacks to the civil rights act if not to imply that blacks were better off without meaningful civil rights.

Hell, he probably thinks allowing women to own property, vote and work outside the home caused the spike in the divorce rate too. They were much better off when their husbands thought for them.; 5/26/10, 11:28 AM
Scott M said...: Edutcher, most conservatives don't know what is in the Constitution. They seem to have a stronger preference for the Confederate Constitution.

Absolute BS and, what's worse, is that you KNOW it's BS.

Pure, unadulterated shark-jumping.; 5/26/10, 11:29 AM
Roger J. said...: My take on Hobbes (and less so Locke) is that Hobbes deals with the issue of covenants--covenants between free people are essential to stability. In the state of nature according to hobbes, "covenenants without the sword are but words alone without the strength to bind." Hobbes is only arguing that laws enforcing covenants are necessary. We may disagree with the laws, but the states role is to provide the assurance that individual contracts will be enforced.; 5/26/10, 11:29 AM
Phil 314 said...: I love the initial condescension:
Rand Paul’s touching (and temporary) display of honesty and the ending full of scorn:
But as Rand Paul has helpfully reminded us, it is a form of ridiculousness to which Americans tend to be inordinately tempted.

Here's a nice, alternative commentary. I particularly love this:
Isn't it time we started querying our political candidates on issues that really matter?

Let's start with this one: If you were a convention delegate in 1778, would you have voted to ratify the Constitution of the United States?
If the answer is yes—and you don't hate America, do you?!—it's only fair we conclude that you support restricting voting rights to male landowners exclusively. Surely, from your position, we can also deduce that you support slavery.

Why do the Dems persist in their search for the Boogeyman (hopefully that's not a racist term, I'm losing track). Let's see we've gone through Limbaugh, Palin, Beck and now Paul.
To whom can we assign all that is ugly and despicable of the Republican Party?; 5/26/10, 11:30 AM
bagoh20 said...: "Yeah, 5000 lynchings didn't do much damage at all"

Bad, but a single days work in a totalitarian state. Perspective.; 5/26/10, 11:30 AM
miller said...: Y'all can go back to fighting over the shiny objects thrown by the internet loons on this thread.; 5/26/10, 11:30 AM
Sofa King said...: Yeah, 5000 lynchings didn't do much damage at all.

Does it do less damage now when more than that number are killed, except mostly by other blacks?; 5/26/10, 11:32 AM
Pastafarian said...: c3, I doubt that many liberals would have voted to ratify the constitution.

Too much freedom. And that whole second amendment thing would have been a deal-breaker.

Now, if they could see into the future, and know that someday they'd be able to twist the plain meaning of words, and ignore the original intent of the writers in "interpreting" what was written, then they would have voted for it.

It was certainly imperfect as written; but it included instructions for amending itself. But that's hard; let's just fudge things a little, and pass things that way.; 5/26/10, 11:36 AM
Beth said...: Jim Crow laws weren't passed to keep "the market" from magically making racist segregation go away. They were passed to turn back the interfering, carpetbagging Feds and newly voting and office-holding blacks. Anyone who fantasizes that "the market" would have ended whites-only businesses, that white southerners were chaffing at the bit against those awful Jim Crow laws, is nuts.; 5/26/10, 11:39 AM
traditionalguy said...: Bagoh20...I like your hopeful attitude, but the segregation laws here in the South and their public and private enforcement for over 80 years was not like a "bad Idea" whites might suddenly forget about. It was an enforced system demanding that all whites must always demean and exclude all blacks or else face social ostracism and violent consequences from other whites. Whether or not that would ever have gone away on its own is extremly unlikely.; 5/26/10, 11:40 AM
Beth said...: Do people really believe that without the 64 act we would still be living with Jim Crow?

Yes. I'm astonished that you think we wouldn't be.; 5/26/10, 11:42 AM
Beth said...: traditionalguy just explained it very well. I concur.

And I can get in my car right now, drive less than an hour from New Orleans and find plenty of de facto "whites only" businesses. They just plain make it very, very unwelcome for blacks to come in.; 5/26/10, 11:43 AM
Roger J. said...: Apropos Beth's point, the book "The most southern place on earth," about the mississipi delta is a great commentary on economic factors driving cotton production. And the focus of the book is on the policies designed to provide labor to bring in a cotton crop.; 5/26/10, 11:44 AM
An Edjamikated Redneck said...: Why can't you people understand the difference between an individual act and an act under the color of law?

Jim Crow was not an individual act; it was law. I couldn't have intergrated my lunch counter had I wanted too.

The governemnt is supported by every individual, and for the government to discriminate between those individuals is wrong, and tars all citizens with the same racist brush.

As an individual I can discriminate against whom ever I choose, and only tar myself.

Bear in mind too, that by the time a bi-partisan vote approves something, its because the people want it. There were individuals all over the south who wanted Jim Crow repealed, but could not get the Democratic machine to go along.

WV: cragrac- what happens when your pinon slips while your climbing; 5/26/10, 11:45 AM
Freder Frederson said...: Bad, but a single days work in a totalitarian state. Perspective.

Nice attempt at backtracking, but this was the particular comment that facetious comment was aimed at:

It's also instructional to realize that slavery and Jim Crow were also enforced by the state. There was individual racism, but the real damage is done when the state takes sides against it's citizens.; 5/26/10, 11:46 AM
Scott M said...: And I can get in my car right now, drive less than an hour from New Orleans and find plenty of de facto "whites only" businesses. They just plain make it very, very unwelcome for blacks to come in.

That's pretty amazing in this day and age, Beth. I would add, though, that I can go six blocks into north St Louis and find the very same in reverse with, I've experienced myself, the hostility meter ratcheted up a bit more.

On the other hand, I can go into a very upscale restaurant on the central-west end and get the same treatment because I didn't arrive in a BMW or Porsche.

Human nature...it does tend to suck.; 5/26/10, 11:47 AM
Pastafarian said...: Beth and tradguy: I agree. The Democrats in the South would have maintained their racist system for a very long time.

That's why Republicans had to force Democrats to abandon it. Just like they had to force them at bayonnet-point to give up their slaves.

But I guess those were the BAD Democrats. Not the good ones that we have now, that believe that affirmative action is needed to help those poor dumb Negroes get a leg up.

And those BAD Democrats became Republicans, according to Freder.

But there does seem to be a second uniting pattern behind Democrats past and present (in addition to their patronizing racism): 18th and 19th century Democrats were so unbelievably lazy that they didn't want to pick their own cotton, so they enslaved other human beings to do it for them.

Modern Democrats are so unbelievably lazy that they don't want to work, and want to receive welfare and food stamps from those who do. So they enslave me, by confiscating the fruits of my labor.

Did they choose a work animal as their mascot for irony?

Oh well, back to work for me, so that 50% of my paycheck can be redistributed. Somebody's got to pick the cotton.; 5/26/10, 11:50 AM
An Edjamikated Redneck said...: Beth said... I can get in my car right now, drive less than an hour from New Orleans and find plenty of de facto "whites only" businesses. They just plain make it very, very unwelcome for blacks to come in.

If they have made the choice to turn away that money, why not compete for those dollars?

Or is it just easier to have teh governemnt interfere with private property rights, so you go home happy?; 5/26/10, 11:50 AM
bagoh20 said...: "Do people really believe that without the 64 act we would still be living with Jim Crow?

Yes. I'm astonished that you think we wouldn't be."

You must hang in a different crowd than I do. The attitudes of the people I know were not caused by a law in 1964. I assume You know a bunch of racist that only act decent because of this law. I don't. If I did, they would be ostracized by the people I do know.

No democracy is going to bind itself by laws it's people do not have a basic belief in, but they can still make law that is counterproductive to those aims.; 5/26/10, 11:51 AM
Unknown said...: I see Alpha/Freder/Montagne is offering a 2 for 1 split on personalities today.

In any case, as those who actually know American history and the provisions of the United States Constitution are aware, the Confederacy did not have a Constitution. It operated under the Articles of Confederation used by the United States from 1781 to 1787. Technically, the first President of the United States was John Hanson.

PS Conservatives read, know, and love the Constitution. The Left, as they prove every day, ignores and tries to find new ways to circumvent it.; 5/26/10, 11:54 AM
bagoh20 said...: Federer, I don't follow you. I have no reason to back track; I just stated a fact. Totalitarian states have been much more murderous than any number of individuals acting alone. Hell, you can just pick out the murderers in any nation and not come close.; 5/26/10, 11:57 AM
Roger J. said...: Beth--while your example may be absolutely correct, I think it is only anecdotal to your part of Louisiana. And I can assure you that if drive three miles west to Orange Mound in Memphis, I will be met with same degree of segregation and attitudes. Although it will be anti-white coming from blacks.; 5/26/10, 11:57 AM
bagoh20 said...: I don't know if the 64 act is a net plus or minus in the long run and neither does anyone else. It seems pretty obvious that it stopped some awful discrimination early on, but it is not without cost. The idea that some people because of skin color are lesser and can't compete fairly is a lie. The expansion of the scope of this law over the years combined with the associated programs have given all the impression that blacks are less capable and that whites are more racist than is true today.

I think it's remnant effects are now becoming more negative than positive. People treated as less capable will sink to that expectation, and you don't give special consideration to those you consider equal. Everyone knows that internally and it gets ingrained from childhood in both groups. There is a reason for the decline of the black family and the rise of dependency and crime in it's place. We should have the courage and compassion to face it, if we really care about all of us and want us all to excel.; 5/26/10, 12:16 PM
Alec Plumb said...: (Oh, right, they don't like social justice, either).

I prefer, you know, actual justice.; 5/26/10, 12:17 PM
Revenant said...: As far as these radical Lockeans are concerned, the former is tyranny, pure and simple, while the latter is just life: yeah, it’s sometimes unfair, but freedom requires that we (or rather, in this case, blacks living under Jim Crow in the South) get over it.

That's an idiotic remark. The Jim Crow laws were *laws*. They were, by definition, government action. Libertarians and "radical Lockeans" hated, and hate, the Jim Crow laws. They also hated the way that the government only protected the rights (real rights like life and property, not fake "rights" like the right not to be discriminated against) of SOME of the citizens while allowing those of others -- blacks, mostly -- to be trampled by armed mobs.

What (some) libertarians are indifferent to is the widespread presence of racial discrimination within non-governmental culture. We do not see it as the government's duty to force your neighbors to like you -- just to force your neighbors to stop trying to lynch you or burn crosses on your lawn.; 5/26/10, 12:23 PM
Revenant said...: Jim Crow laws weren't passed to keep "the market" from magically making racist segregation go away.

That wasn't the ONLY reason they were passed, but it was *a* reason they were passed. White businessmen and private citizens who failed to enforce racist policies were subject to fines, or even jail time.

The notion that the racist culture wouldn't have gone away in the absence of federal intervention is silly. If that sort of thing requires federal intervention, how is it that the northern states managed it? They used to be slave states. They used to have -- and by "used to have" I mean up to the mid-20th century -- pervasively racist attitudes towards blacks. Yet mysteriously they overcame those problems without Uncle Sam needing to make racism illegal.

Why? Because unlike the South, the North actually had a free market for ideas about race relations. In the South any ideas that deviated from "segregation now, segregation forever" were suppressed by the government -- both actively, through the law, and passively through government refusal to arrest and prosecute anti-black terrorists.; 5/26/10, 12:31 PM
A.G. said...: "Paul, like many libertarians and Tea Party activists, is so obsessed with the possibility that the state might commit an injustice that he’s indifferent to the reality of actually existing injustice at the hands of private citizens...".

I love how the author just casually throws "Tea Party activists" into this, without any shred of proof to support his accusation.

I wonder if the TNR author would agree to this: "Sexually perverted predators, like pedophiles and TNR author Damon Linker, like to scour the Internet looking for the next hapless victim."...? Two can play that game...; 5/26/10, 12:34 PM
Beth said...: Redneck, under Jim Crow, without laws against private business discrimination, a black family traveling through the south would have to find those competing businesses, stopping and starting their way down the road, looking for a place to eat, to buy gas, to sleep. The possibility of them finding some competing establishments doesn't make that any less ugly. If this is at the core of Libertarianism, then Libertarians should be marginalized.; 5/26/10, 12:56 PM
Beth said...: Revenant, did you somehow overlook that the North and South went to war? There were core, cultural differences among the two.; 5/26/10, 12:57 PM
YoungHegelian said...: Freder,

Since you seemed confused by what I posted before, let me try and confuse you some more.

I think that that the noble intentions of the US to redeem the promises made to blacks after the civil war produced mixed results, not surprising considering the scale of of the enterprise.

For the top 50 per cent of the black community, the struggle was an unalloyed blessing. For the bottom quartile, their lives have become a living hell. And, yes, desegregation is implicated for much of the misery of the bottom quartile, as community leaders with any get up and go got up and went.

I think, on balance, that the right thing was done, as much for the souls of whites as for the living conditions of blacks. But the costs for the black underclass have been enormous, and do cast a pall on the civil rights struggle.

This is all old news, Freder. Discussed at length some thirty or more years ago by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a Democrat of note and of long service to his party.

I have no idea how history will judge the US for how we implemented civil rights. It takes no nostalgia for Jim Crow to see that good intentions went awry, a fact bemoaned in tome upon tome of sociological analysis.

Why you need to be such a putz as to impute racist tendencies to someone who brings up such a sociologically obvious fact is something that you will have to answer for yourself in your own conscience.; 5/26/10, 12:59 PM
Beth said...: Scott and Roger, I can find the same problem here in New Orleans. All that tells me is that race still causes animosity between people in the U.S. We're better for not allowing those attitudes the force of law.; 5/26/10, 1:01 PM
Anonymous said...: Locke > Hobbes; 5/26/10, 1:20 PM
Gabriel Hanna said...: I'm no fan of Rand Paul. But I am not the first to point out that segregation was not something that private citizens did on their own time. It was the law in the South. No matter how much or how little you liked black people, it was ILLEGAL for you to let them sit with whites or drink from the same fountains or whatever.

Those laws enjoyed broad support in the South, but they were the opposite of letting people be racist if they wanted to. They were examples of government power used to enforce racism.

That's the problem with government power, and that's why libertarians like to see it used sparingly. It can be used for evil as well as good, and since men are not angels that means it eventually will be.

Barry Goldwater, who for a few years recently was the ideal conservative which liberals lamented that no Republicans nowadays emulate, voted against the Civil Rights Act on libertarian grounds. He also established scholarships for minority students.; 5/26/10, 1:21 PM
Gabriel Hanna said...: @Beth:

Redneck, under Jim Crow, without laws against private business discrimination, a black family traveling through the south would have to find those competing businesses, stopping and starting their way down the road, looking for a place to eat, to buy gas, to sleep.

You have it exactly backward. Under Jim Crow, BY STATE LAW, private businesses were FORCED to discriminate.; 5/26/10, 1:24 PM
Beth said...: Gabriel, only in your imagination did most of those business need to be forced.; 5/26/10, 1:25 PM
Gabriel Hanna said...: @Beth:

Gabriel, only in your imagination did most of those business need to be forced.

Kindly restrict your remarks to things I actually said, would you?

The laws then gave no one a choice. The laws now give no one a choice. Doesn't make them morally equivalent, but they are both examples of government coercion, and not examples of anything libertarians are in favor of.; 5/26/10, 1:29 PM
Beth said...: Those laws enjoyed broad support in the South, but they were the opposite of letting people be racist if they wanted to.

Libertarians are stuck on the mandate. They want to show they're anti-racism by saying Jim Crow FORCED people to be racist in their businesses, but they also want to preserve people's right to be racist in their businesses. Then they double-back and argue that the market would make sure that racist businesses would lose in the competition. That's the flaw, though. In the South, repealing Jim Crow didn't happen. It could have, if enough people had voted for it. But they didn't. Without Jim Crow laws enforcing segregation, businesses would have continued to discriminate. Jim Crow was just a states rights move to keep the Feds out, to codify what most white people wanted anyway. The market of ideas kept Jim Crow in place and the CRA was necessary.; 5/26/10, 1:34 PM
Beth said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 5/26/10, 1:35 PM
Freder Frederson said...: Why you need to be such a putz as to impute racist tendencies to someone who brings up such a sociologically obvious fact is something that you will have to answer for yourself in your own conscience.

Because there is no such sociologically obvious fact to draw from the passage of civil rights laws.

You are simply implying that black folks were and incapable of handling the civil rights granted to them.

Not only is this historically inaccurate, it is racist and offensive.

I am sorry if you don't recognize your deep seated racism, but I sure do.; 5/26/10, 1:57 PM
DADvocate said...: private companies should be free to practice racism ... prohibit racism from the public sector.

Now we have racism (and other "isms") in the public sector (affirmative action) and prohibited in the private sector.

blacks were better off when they knew their place and had wise, benevolent white folks taking care of them

Sounds like the current approach of liberals. Any black who is not a liberal Democrat is an Uncle Tom, Oreo or such. All blacks fall in line behind the liberals. We'll take care of you with welfare, public housing, etc. Be sure to vote for us.; 5/26/10, 1:59 PM
Bruce Hayden said...: Republicans dislike any talk about racism -- unless it's them accusing someone of being a racist. Like, say, Obama or Sotomayor.

Otherwise, they don't give a rat's ass about racism and will deny it even exists, let alone the harm and injustice it causes.

How did the subject change from libertarianism to racism? Oh, wait, a liberal is involved, and that is not SOP when dealing with conservatives and esp. libertarians.

Never mind that they support the political party that has been the racist party now for 200 years. For 2/3 of that, they were the slave owners, their apologists, and those implementing Jim Crow. How else can you explain honoring a former Klan officer and allowing him to be President Pro-Tem of the Senate? More recently, they have maintained their power by yelling racism and treating the lesser races paternalistically. What would those poor undereducated, unmarried, poor minorities do if they didn't have the great Democratic Party to take care of them? To yell racism upon demand? To deliver largess because they are too backwards to take care of themselves?

What you fail to understand is that Affirmative Action is highly racist, maybe not as racist as Jim Crow, but getting there. That yelling racist at everyone who might suggest that maybe part of the problem is that these minorities might better themselves on their own is far more racist that what you are claiming is racist.

What you fail to understand is that it isn't that Republicans dislike talk about racism, but rather, that they refuse to accept the tag of being racist or accept blame for the horrors that the Democratic Party has visited upon esp. African-Americans for better than 200 years now.

And it is not that they deny that it exists, but rather, that they deny that they are the racists. And they deny that calling anyone you disagree with a racist helps alleviate racism.

Our goal, since well before MLK, Jr., is a color blind society. You don't get their by emphasizing race, but rather, by ignoring it.; 5/26/10, 2:03 PM
Opus One Media said...: c3 said..."Why do the Dems persist in their search for the Boogeyman. Let's see we've gone through Limbaugh, Palin, Beck and now Paul. To whom can we assign all that is ugly and despicable of the Republican Party?"

C3 we haven't even begun to "go through" your list of fools. If you back a drug user, a fool, a guy who likes to dress like a Nazi and a fellow who may like the 3/5ths of a vote from the census clause, then, oh boy oh boy, we have months to go before we get to the last worm in that can.; 5/26/10, 2:04 PM
Opus One Media said...: @Beth..

Well said.; 5/26/10, 2:06 PM
Anonymous said...: Everybody in this argument is right. Businesses in the South were forced to discriminate. The laws that coerced that discrimination were the codification of the preferences of the majority of whites. The Civil Rights Act was sweeping legislation that righted a serious wrong but, because of its sweeping nature, is anathema to libertarian thought.

Racists suck for a lot of reasons. One of the biggest reasons is because they tainted a perfectly good idea -- states' rights -- for generations. You can't abuse local control like they did.; 5/26/10, 2:06 PM
former law student said...: They also hated the way that the government only protected the rights (real rights like life and property, not fake "rights" like the right not to be discriminated against...

How can a man have a right to property when property owners have the right not to trade with him? Not because of any flaws in his character, but because of an abundance of pigment in his skin?

Failure to see such obvious consequences of his ideology makes Rand Paul an idiot-savant.; 5/26/10, 2:11 PM
bagoh20 said...: "Failure to see such obvious consequences of his ideology makes Rand Paul an idiot-savant."

Of course he sees it and Libertarians always accept such consequences, but they disagree with you about the extent of it and the relative cost of preventing it through government mandate. Maybe you fail to see the obvious consequences of that and you're both idiot savants. Start a club. Call it the F.I.B. = Fraternuty of the Ideologically Blinded.; 5/26/10, 2:19 PM
former law student said...: What you fail to understand is that Affirmative Action is highly racist, maybe not as racist as Jim Crow, but getting there.

No one assumes unfairness when a white person gets the job. Would C-student GWB have become President had he been black? Would Bush have gotten rich white people to bankroll his purchase of the Texas Rangers if he had been black? Would Bush have gotten the voters of Arlington, Texas to tax themselves to fund his new ballpark had he been black?; 5/26/10, 2:21 PM
former law student said...: bago: Black people have the right to own property but not the right to acquire it.

The short bus is leaving, bago, but if you can tie your own shoes you can catch it.; 5/26/10, 2:24 PM
Bruce Hayden said...: What the left here wants everyone to ignore is that the times were changing in the 1960s. They were changing fast. Woolworth desegregated their lunch counters in the South on their own - after some marches and demonstrations, yes, but still, before the CRA of 1964. The same changing times that allowed passage of that law were pushing for desegregation at an increasingly fast rate.

Liberals would like you to believe that without their passage of these laws (well, actually, passage by Republicans with some Democratic help, but let's skip that right now), that African-Americans would still be living under the American version of Apartheid in the South.

But that is revisonist horse pucky, invented to justify rapidly increasing government control over our lives.

The civil rights marches were on national TV and in Time and Life magazines. And, they were working.

If the CRA of 1964 had not included Title II (which is what the libertarians most dislike about the law), but still banned segregationist laws, I think it highly likely that private segregation would have been on the way out by 1970. Actually, it was on its way out by 1964. With the Voting Rights Act the next year, racist politicians were now reaching out to Blacks for support.

Keep in mind the debate here. Libertarians, for the most part, do not disagree with the banning of discriminatory or segregationist laws. They are already state action, and using state power to impose an illegitimate end, such as segregation is an unacceptable use of that state power.

The debate involves the ban on private action that may be considered racist, in this case, initially public accommodations. Later spread to much more. And, in particular where the private action has little, if any, real impact on interstate commerce, we are talking imposition of the government into the private affairs of its citizens.

This is the place where Rand Paul had his problems. He agreed with the goal of the CRA of 1964. He just disagreed with the government imposed ban on racist PRIVATE actions.; 5/26/10, 2:30 PM
Bruce Hayden said...: How can a man have a right to property when property owners have the right not to trade with him? Not because of any flaws in his character, but because of an abundance of pigment in his skin?

This is no different from refusing to deal because you don't trust the other guy, because he didn't shine his shoes, and a million other reasons.

BUT, in the grand scheme of things, while one transaction may not complete for this reason, in the long run, the Black will get his goods at a fair price? Why? It is called arbitrage in economics. Someone will discover that they can make money exploiting these market inefficiencies, because that is exactly what you are talking about here.

You also have to combine this with the rapid nationalization that was occurring during the 1960s and beyond, and later internationalization. Woolworth could have segregated lunch counters in the South as long as those in the North and West didn't know what was going on. But the chain was going to lose far more business nationally from people refusing to deal with them as long as they participated in segregation, than if they refused to participate. And that was just the tip of the ice burg. Imagine Coca Cola, or Delta Airlines, today based in Atlanta, if these companies participated in segregation.

The point there is that while small businesses could continue to discriminate, larger ones that were not limited to the South were rapidly finding that they could not.; 5/26/10, 2:42 PM
bagoh20 said...: "bago: Black people have the right to own property but not the right to acquire it. "

I am stupid. I thought you could make sense.; 5/26/10, 2:43 PM
Bruce Hayden said...: No one assumes unfairness when a white person gets the job. Would C-student GWB have become President had he been black? Would Bush have gotten rich white people to bankroll his purchase of the Texas Rangers if he had been black? Would Bush have gotten the voters of Arlington, Texas to tax themselves to fund his new ballpark had he been black?

And, the answer would be, of course, no, but not for the reasons that you are suggesting. Rather, the answer is that his father, the 41st President, is White, and so was his grandfather, the Senator from Conn.

What you are arguing here is correlation, not causation. He was able to do all these things because of who his ancestors were. If they had been Black, and had accomplished what they had, then your whole scenario would fall apart.

Likely none of us who are White here could have accomplished those things. We don't have the family connections. Yet we are White. So where does that leave us.

Now President Obama is a different story. I think a distinct majority of Americans would agree that he wouldn't now be President except for his race. He was uniquely unqualified for the job. In fact, he was less qualified than any of the other people on major party tickets (i.e. Biden, McCain, or Palin). Yet he was able to ride a wave of MSM induced hysteria that mostly just emphasized the historical nature of his race into the White House.; 5/26/10, 2:50 PM
AlphaLiberal said...: Hey, Ann. Don't look now but it's Rand Paul in shorts.; 5/26/10, 2:55 PM
Hoosier Daddy said...: And I can get in my car right now, drive less than an hour from New Orleans and find plenty of de facto "whites only" businesses. They just plain make it very, very unwelcome for blacks to come in.

Pffft. Hell I can take you in mine and within 20 minutes provide you examples of the exact opposite.

Give me a break.; 5/26/10, 3:00 PM
former law student said...: He just disagreed with the government imposed ban on racist PRIVATE actions.

The Gospel according to Libertarian Luke:

1In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Southern world. 2(This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) 3And everyone went to his own town to register.
4So Joseph also went up from the town of Bethlehem in Alabama to Georgia, to Atlanta the town of Aaron, because he belonged to the house and line of Hank Aaron. 5He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. 6While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for blacks in the Heart of Atlanta Motel.; 5/26/10, 3:03 PM
Gabriel Hanna said...: @Beth:

Libertarians are stuck on the mandate. They want to show they're anti-racism by saying Jim Crow FORCED people to be racist in their businesses, but they also want to preserve people's right to be racist in their businesses.

Exactly. Just like you want people to be free to burn the American flag and put crucifixes in jars of urine, libertarians want Americans free to be racist.; 5/26/10, 3:03 PM
Anonymous said...: Rand Paul's position also would have precluded adoption of Jim Crow laws by state and local governments in the first place. I suppose if we must tar and feather Rand because his libertarian position does not preclude private racism, we must also tar and feather the anti-libertarian statists whose position does not preclude public racism.; 5/26/10, 3:31 PM
Synova said...: "No one assumes unfairness when a white person gets the job. Would C-student GWB have become President had he been black? Would Bush have gotten rich white people to bankroll his purchase of the Texas Rangers if he had been black? Would Bush have gotten the voters of Arlington, Texas to tax themselves to fund his new ballpark had he been black?"

Or Biden, huh? Kerry was a C student.

And isn't the argument in favor of affirmative action not the *color* of a person but whether or not they are likely to have a family history of success in any particular industry?

I just saw the pilot of an enormously funny TV show "The Good Guys" that starred Colin Hanks. Without a famous movie star father, would the young Hanks have consider a career as an actor or had access to the same opportunities? No? Same for Hallie Barry, isn't it? Jayden Smith?

Bush didn't get to be president on a C average because he was white, or his brother governor of Florida because he's white, but because growing up they learned that getting to be a politician for a career was a possible sort of thing and if they wanted to do that they knew how to go about it.

To my family going to an Ivy League school is unthinkable. But Obama's father had gone to Harvard. It becomes an ordinary thing to do what your father did, even if what your father did wasn't ordinary.

So the argument is made for affirmative action... to get Historically oppressed people over that hump of missing family experiences.

But maybe there are better ways to the same end. Maybe those things can be done without discriminating against people because of their color when they, too, might have an equal lack of family advantage. Pointing out that racial discrimination is wrong or that government coercion is wrong and that, independent of the goal, these things have negative consequences is not a refutation of purpose... only methods.

Look at the arguments here? How often is it, if you disagree with the method you must disagree with the purpose?

There *must* be any number of possible ways to solve any problem. Why is it that we can't assume a commonality in wishing to solve a problem while disagreeing on methods or expressing concerns about very real and negative outcomes from taking any old solution so long as it is presented?; 5/26/10, 3:41 PM
The Crack Emcee said...: Lies, lies, lies.

That's all I'm saying - and i don't even like Rand Paul.; 5/26/10, 3:41 PM
Opus One Media said...: Seven Machos said...
"Everybody in this argument is right. Businesses in the South were forced to discriminate."

I don't think that is totally accurate and I'm troubled by your opening statement. True libertarians would or could conclude that hanging a "whites only" sign on a drinking fountain was a choice made rather than obedience to authority...and a true libertarian would have said nuts to you...; 5/26/10, 3:43 PM
Beth said...: Gabriel, I understand that. And that's why Libertarians will remain a marginal group. Most Americans look beyond principles to actual outcomes. We make those judgment calls all the time. We legalize one drug and ban another. We decide that burning a flag expresses and idea and causes no other person harm. We don't act to stop a store owner from flying a Confederate flag, but we've decided that allowing the same store owner to put up a "No X, Y and Z Allowed" sign at the door causes unacceptable harm. Libertarians can feel happy with their seamless garment of principle, but they'll continue to run up against the politics of real world interactions.; 5/26/10, 4:01 PM
Beth said...: Don, that may be true. In sci-fi, time travel plots always cause internal consistency issues. But we read them, anyway. Libertarians themselves have raised the issue of the CRA, though, so they can't complain if someone plays time travel politics in response.; 5/26/10, 4:04 PM
Beth said...: Seven - good point about how racists taint the states rights argument.; 5/26/10, 4:09 PM
Eric said...: Paul, like many libertarians and Tea Party activists, is so obsessed with the possibility that the state might commit an injustice that he’s indifferent to the reality of actually existing injustice at the hands of private citizens.

There's a fundamental difference between what the state should be allowed to do and what private citizens should be allowed to do.

There's just no equivalency.; 5/26/10, 4:48 PM
Anonymous said...: I wonder what Paul's harsher critics here make of C. Vann Woodward's argument in The Strange Career of Jim Crow, that during the interval between the end of Reconstruction and the passing of Jim Crow laws, businesses in the South discriminated only spottily.; 5/26/10, 4:48 PM
bagoh20 said...: "And that's why Libertarians will remain a marginal group. Most Americans look beyond principles to actual outcomes."

But the outcome is not that great. I think the CRA was the legislative expression of the mood of the country, but that does not mean it was the best solution. Respect for the rights of minorities has been a natural ongoing development in this country. German, Irish, Italian, Polish and others who started out with severe discrimination and gained acceptance before 1964 without federal mandate. Now, those groups are much better off than blacks in terms assimilation without the damaging effects of dependency and victim mentality that cripples many blacks today. Likewise, Asians have not been dependent on the CRA, in fact some of it works against them, yet they now outperform all ethnic groups including whites in most areas. The experience and results for these other minorities are not because blacks are less capable, but because we have, by law and policy, assumed they are and many of them and us have bought it.; 5/26/10, 4:58 PM
miller said...: "...The experience and results for these other minorities are not because blacks are less capable, but because we have, by law and policy, assumed they are and many of them and us have bought it."

There is a major train wreck coming for blacks in America because the Indians and Chinese (and others) are going to eat their lunch. While blacks are fighting over crumbs from the pie, the Indians and Chinese are galloping into the tech field, leapfrogging everyone else (including whites). I work in a high tech industry and I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of black software development engineers in a company of 5,000 plus engineers. The majority (NOT plurality) of engineers are from India, with the next largest group from China.

You want to do something to improve the lives of black America? Stop tussling about the CRA and who's the purer libertarian and get our black kids into technical schools and train them in math and science. Of course, most schools in America are crap, so it's a moot issue. We produce lawyers like nobody's business, but people that can solve problems and create solutions? We're leaving that to the Indians and Chinese.

I read a story today that the income gap between black and non-black America has widened in the past 20 years. And this with our first black president (Clinton) and our next-to-first black president (Obama).

Y'all keep arguing though. Keep standing on the dock arguing about seating while the ship has sailed away.; 5/26/10, 5:10 PM
bagoh20 said...: miller,

I think we are in agreement. We're both saying that discrimination is not the real problem and stuff like the CRA is not the solution, what you said is. Unfortunately we have developed a culture that believes that success is only prevented by someone holding you back rather than your own lack of effort and vision. That's an infectious disease.; 5/26/10, 5:25 PM
Phil 314 said...: HD;
If you back a drug user, a fool, a guy who likes to dress like a Nazi and a fellow who may like the 3/5ths of a vote from the census clause,

I assume you mean Limbaugh (drug user), don't listen to him; Beck (dress like a Nazi ) don't listen or watch him; Paul ( like the 3/5ths of a vote ), don't live in Kentucky.

And damn, I'm still a Republican....go figure!

And likewise I don't believe someone who was in the KKK, someone who tried to sell a Senate seat nor someone who hid cold bribery cash in his freezer represents the Democratic Party.

Of course, YMMV; 5/26/10, 5:34 PM
traditionalguy said...: A few facts that would be helpful in the great debate over the out of control Federal Government 45 years ago was that was a time when1) the black voters were still being effectively excluded from voting by registration laws (despite the non-libertarian 14th amendment forced upon free whites by William T Sherman and Thaddeus Stevens), and 2) both of the Kennedy brothers and MLK were fair game for "lone crazed"assassins from nowhere, and 3) The military draft for Viet Nam was getting all of the young black men who got none of the deferments and none of the prescious openings into the always full national guard and reserve units. Allowing the hatred of the southern protectors of the white women from race mixing in public accommodations was a necessary move to keep the peace. Ron and Rand Paul remember those days as their glory days and now they want us to relive them so we can join in with their mental illness.; 5/26/10, 5:40 PM
traditionalguy said...: I meant " no longer allowing".; 5/26/10, 5:42 PM
An Edjamikated Redneck said...: Beth, I find it interesting that in an hour's round trip drive you can find establishments that discriminate racially from both sides.

45 years after the end of Jim Crow and the passage of the Civil Rights Act.

How do you explain that?

How do you feel about it? In as much that this requires at least a percentage of blacks to be at least a little racist?

Or is it a retaliatory response to the white store owners several miles away?

I used to work in a service station, back when that meant something, in a racially mixed neighborhood. We had young black guy who did the cleaning for us at the station, and on Saturday's he would stop at a barbecue joint a block or two away and get ribs for us.

Some Saturdays I would go myself, if there were two of us on the shift, and invariably when I opened the door all conversation would stop and every eye would turn toward me.

And I knew by sight most of the folks in there. They came by the station; I had pumped their gas and fixed their cars.

I was served; conversations would slowly restart, I would talk to several about problems they had with their cars, but the whole atmosphere was strained.

And I was the only white person in the store.

Was this racism?

I don't think so; I just think it was a group response to someone different in their midst.

My presence made both sides of the situation uncomfortable, and yet we both knew we had no reason to be. I didn't go there often; maybe 3 or 4 times tops in the course of 5 or 6 years, and each time I felt the same.

Did they feel the same when they visited the white owned business I worked at? I doubt it; our place was always full of both races, so things weren't as one sided.

To makea long story short, if its not too late, maybe the feeling you get in both of these places isn't institutional or even individual racism, but only a sociological response to some one different?; 5/26/10, 6:02 PM
A.G. said...: The experience and results for these other minorities are not because blacks are less capable, but because we have, by law and policy, assumed they are and many of them and us have bought it.

I agree, bagoh20. In fact, I've always thought this assumption was the most subtle form of racism, when you take it to its logical conclusion.

And miller, you raise a great point about the importance of a technical-related education for blacks and other traditionally lower-income minorities. I know Japanese-Americans whose parents were in relocation camps in WWII; one could argue that they have a right to blame this on "racism", and carry this resentment with them the rest of their lives. Yet, the individuals that I know (and this is pretty common, I believe), rarely even talk about it. Instead, they live very successful lives and are highly paid as a result of their focus on the importance of education, especially in the math and sciences.

But sadly, I think the elitist Libs want to keep black students away from such an education, because they fear giving up their precious control over everything, and this is why they haven't pushed for this in decades.; 5/26/10, 6:22 PM
Synova said...: "Most Americans look beyond principles to actual outcomes."

I disagree with this.

I think that most Americans do not look at outcomes at all. Otherwise wouldn't we tend to follow through to see if what we propose actually works or not? I think that rather than an interest in outcomes, we have an interest in answering a moral need to "do something" and once that something is done we feel content that our responsibility has been met... no matter the outcome.; 5/26/10, 6:33 PM
miller said...: "But sadly, I think the elitist Libs want to keep black students away from such an education, because they fear giving up their precious control over everything, and this is why they haven't pushed for this in decades. "

I don't know if it's that. It makes a good clever riposte to a libtard, but I can't figure out why black Americans who have been so ill-served by their allegiance to one party continue to let their alcoholic daddy beat them again and again. I am NOT saying "well, they should just become Republicans." I AM saying "what in God's name will it take to get black Americans to stop letting themselves be used in each election to get people into power who continually do not do anything to help them get out of their bondage?"

Something is seriously & toxically wrong if I can actually count more first and second generation Vietnamese than black software engineers at my business.

I mean, my God, inner city schools are shit and have been for decades, we pour billions of dollars into them, and yet we are not making any changes. Why aren't black Americans creating the equivalent of Tea Parties about this? How can they let their kids continue to be so ill-served? I believe they love their kids as much as anyone else, but do they really just not see that this is just so wrong? Why do they continue to elect politicians who continue to abuse their kids?

Well, that's just me. Maybe I'm missing some big thing here about how wonderful it is to create yet another generation of kids who are stuck without education and hope. But I swear if I didn't know any better I'd think the Democrats were doing this on purpose. Which is, perhaps, to your point.; 5/26/10, 7:07 PM
Revenant said...: Revenant, did you somehow overlook that the North and South went to war?

Before you accuse me of "ignoring" it you ought to offer a rational argument for why a war fought a century before would cause the residents of the losing states -- many of whom were, by that point, descended in whole or in part from the WINNING side of the war or from people who hadn't even immigrated yet -- would make a South without Jim Crow laws incapable of freely changing without direct government coercion.

As part of your argument, be sure to explain how it is that there were eight Southern congressmen who voted for the CRA and one Southern President who signed it. How did these people exist, if the core of Southern culture was incurably racist?

I think you're making the mistake of thinking the entire South was like backwoods Louisiana.

There were core, cultural differences among the two.

Not really, no. There were when the war was fought, but post-WW2 the differences began rapidly disappearing. The southern Baby Boom generation and the northern Baby Boom generation didn't have enough cultural differences between them to be worth mentioning.; 5/26/10, 8:41 PM
Alex said...: Repukilicans. Rethuglicans. RepuliKKKans. THis is so much fun.; 5/26/10, 8:55 PM
A.G. said...: Well, that's just me. Maybe I'm missing some big thing here about how wonderful it is to create yet another generation of kids who are stuck without education and hope. But I swear if I didn't know any better I'd think the Democrats were doing this on purpose. Which is, perhaps, to your point.

miller,

Heh- see what I mean? I don't know if it's a conscious effort or not, but I know what the effects of it are. The elite Libs get to control everything and congratulate themselves, and their co-dependents suffer away. And it will go on like this forever without radical intervention. The elites create learned helplessness in a way by pushing their ethnic studies programs (subtly implying to inner cities students that they can't/shouldn't focus primarily in other studies), and then what are the students left with? That's why I think AZ had the right approach in banning these programs. And there's nothing that prevents people from studying the history of their race on their own time.

Why aren't they doing their own kind of Tea Parties protesting this problem? There are a lot of reasons, but I would argue that this is one area where conservatives really need to seize the day- the ultimate payoffs might take awhile, but it's the right thing to do.; 5/26/10, 9:07 PM
DADvocate said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 5/26/10, 9:26 PM
DADvocate said...: No one assumes unfairness when a white person gets the job.

Would I have been told (quite candidly since since she knew my father) the lady in personnel at TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority - a federal agency) in 1980 that unless I was black or female that I needn't bother applying for a job (despite my 3.97 GPA in grad school) if I was black or female?

I just love/hate listening to liberals champion bigotry. Of course no one questions it when the person on the receiving end is a white male.

Would even poorer students, like Gore and Kerry, have become Democratic candidates if they weren't rich, white guys? Bigots!! Those Democrats!!; 5/26/10, 9:29 PM
DADvocate said...: The southern Baby Boom generation and the northern Baby Boom generation didn't have enough cultural differences between them to be worth mentioning.

How true. Many baby boomer "Southerners", like myself, had parents from other parts. I grew up in Knoxville, TN and didn't know what the word "nigger" was until I was in the 8th grade because I went to a parochial school and had midwestern parents. My dad was from Ohio and my mother had lived several places around the midwest.

WWII moved a lot of people around. I doubt many appreciate how much it stirred up the domestic social pot.; 5/26/10, 9:43 PM
Revenant said...: How can a man have a right to property when property owners have the right not to trade with him?

Quite easily. The proof of this being, I *do* have the right not to trade with you, and yet you still somehow possess property.

Now, the question "how could a man possess property if nobody was willing to trade with him at all" is "he couldn't". But that's a straw man; there is no such thing as a person nobody will trade with, and no such thing as a person everyone is willing to trade with.

Not because of any flaws in his character, but because of an abundance of pigment in his skin?

I can legally discriminate against you for a whole host of reasons having nothing to do with your character: your hair, your eyes, your height, your weight, your family, your citizenship status, etc. Yet property rights continue to exist. Odd, no?

The reason they exist is that senseless discrimination is inefficient. A person who refuses to ever do business with a black man loses not only that black man's business, but the business of people who dislike racists.

When American society was largely insular and immobile that didn't mean much, because odds are you'd be born, live your entire life, and die within the same small area. But the latter half of the 20th century saw an America which was incredibly mobile and incredibly interconnected. Bigotry doesn't survive in that kind of environment unless the government enforces it.

That's why, today, the only socially-acceptable forms of racism are the kinds of government enforces, e.g. racial discrimination on behalf of ostensibly disadvantaged minorities.; 5/26/10, 9:59 PM
Anonymous said...: Well its obvious that institutional racism continues to exist at intolerable levels today. Bastions of white privilege like Madison Wisconsin (84% white: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madison,_WI#Demographics ) have done not nearly enough to combat invidious racism and progress society to its post-racial future. Any responsible member of society would surely endorse zoning residential housing plots to integrate neighborhoods, artificially inseminating women to produce a more appropriate demographic distribution, and relocating whites to traditionally minority neighborhoods to promote integration and diversity. Yet sadly so many liberals are not up to the challenge.; 5/26/10, 10:00 PM
John henry said...: All this talk about racism, segregation and Jim Crow and nobody wants to mention the elephant in the room.

What about segregated colleges? They not only exist, they get financial and monetary support from the federal government to assure that they can continue.

Somehow it is OK when blacks choose not to associate with Whites.

Why is it not equally OK for whites to choose not to associate with blacks?

By segregated colleges, I mean the underfunded and second rate "historically black" colleges. Why are they still allowed to exist? Why are they not allowed to whither away and go out of business. Or better, forced to integrate so that they have a student, faculty and admin body that reflects the colors of America. That is 13% (or so) black and the rest white, hispanic, asian etc.

John Henry; 5/26/10, 10:15 PM
John henry said...: Thomas Sowell wrote an excellent book 15 or so years back. Actually, he has written 25 or so excellent books over the years.

This one was titled "The Economics of Race and Discrimination" and looked at many of the economic effects of discrimination and non-discrimination.

Well worth a read if you can find it.

He also looks at black progress prior to 1964 in terms of income, job opportunities, education, integration into communities and found that it was was quite a bit faster in the period 1945-1970 (or so, I am going from memory here) than in the succeeding years. Not that progress stopped, though as other have noted it did go backwards in some areas such as family. But progress slowed.

John Henry; 5/26/10, 10:22 PM
Anil Petra said...: the author is ignorant of the abundant economic literature that supports the proposition that free markets retard and ultimately eliminate businesses that engage in discrimination. Rand's view is not motivated by lockean utopianism, but rather an honest view of how limited have been the gains of government intervention in black economic progress. Civil right litigation has descended into a cesspool of government funded ("public interest") or defendent-pays litigation (ultimately, same thing) that has little impact on black incomes and net worth. The travesty of obama's termination of the washington, DC vouchers program and doubling down on teachers unions so antithetical to black education are the great civil rights crimes of the new millennium.; 5/26/10, 10:50 PM
Beth said...: I think you're making the mistake of thinking the entire South was like backwoods Louisiana.

Revenant, I didn't grow up in Louisiana, but you would have no way of knowing that. I'm a military brat, and my family is from the South. My parents grew up in Georgia and Arkansas; I've lived in Arkansas, Texas, and Louisiana, as well as parts in the Midwest. My siblings have lived in those places, along with Florida and Georgia. I know people from all over the South, and I travel mostly in the South. My experiences are broad.

You're right that the CRA would never have passed without Southern congressmen voting for it. They knew those changes would not happen at the state level, so good for them. Lots of Southerners opposed private and public segregation. I've watched my own family change their opinions about segregation over time, and address our own racism. I don't deny the role that soul-searching played in changing the face of the South.

I'm defending the federal role because I believe that it's a foul thing for U.S. citizens to be turned away from the door of restaurants, hotels, stores, gas stations, depending on where they find themselves at the time. I don't believe the market would have sorted that out - that doesn't mean there wouldn't have been more and more non-segregated places over time, but so what? There'd still be plenty of segregation to contend with. It was important to reject that as a nation.; 5/27/10, 1:25 AM
Revenant said...: You're right that the CRA would never have passed without Southern congressmen voting for it. They knew those changes would not happen at the state level, so good for them.

You have missed the point with almost surgical precision. The very fact that the South was able to *elect* those Congressmen is, itself, proof that the South was capable of change from within. Those Congressmen were elected despite the existence of state laws aimed specifically at suppressing any sort of opposition to the existing racist regimes. It is obvious that in the absence of government-sponsored racism, the existing Southern trend away from cultural racism would have been stronger and faster.

This is a moot point, anyway. We can argue for days over whether we needed a federal ban on private racism in order to destroy the culture of segregation. Maybe it was necessary, maybe it wasn't. But even if it was necessary then, it isn't now. The war's over. The good guys won. The argument that restrictions on peoples' rights were necessary for the sake of the fight ceases to apply once the fight's over, and the fight's been over for decades.

I'm defending the federal role because I believe that it's a foul thing for U.S. citizens to be turned away from the door of restaurants, hotels, stores, gas stations, depending on where they find themselves at the time.

I agree that it is a foul thing to refuse to serve someone because of their race. I don't know a libertarian who doesn't. It is, however, a foul thing that is a natural right of every human being. It is called the right to freedom of association, and "but your reasons for choosing who you associate with are revolting to me" is not a valid reason for stripping someone of that right.; 5/27/10, 2:14 AM
miller said...: "It is called the right to freedom of association..."

This is an important point. I believe it's still a right even though it's despised because it's abused. We protect speech even if it's ugly. Why don't we protect the right to associate with the same vehemence?

Of course, the right to free speech is restricted when it's inconvenient. Some people (I'm speaking to you, Bambi) get upset when the right to free speech is restated. But it's just as important as the right to freely associate with those whom we want to associate.; 5/27/10, 2:52 AM
Franklin said...: Damn, you can tell how pants-wetting terrified the Left is of libertarians!

Go Rand Paul!; 5/27/10, 8:11 AM
former law student said...: Interesting that none of the commenters here thought it was unfair that a mediocre white man became President after a lifetime of favoritism shown him because of who his daddy and other family members were, and not because of his own merit. Yet if a similarly mediocre black man with a daddy to smooth his way through life had become President, they would all cry Affirmative Action.

But that's a straw man; there is no such thing as a person nobody will trade with...

rev, I'm surprised. You don't usually pull things out of your derriere, yet I can see no other source for that idea.

The reason they exist is that senseless discrimination is inefficient. A person who refuses to ever do business with a black man loses not only that black man's business, but the business of people who dislike racists.

But in the segregated South, people loved racists. Discrimination was the norm. The Heart of America motel case came about after the CRA struck down Jim Crow by law. The owner liked Jim Crow, and didn't like Negroes staying in his motel.; 5/27/10, 11:35 AM
Revenant said...: Interesting that none of the commenters here thought it was unfair that a mediocre white man became President after a lifetime of favoritism shown him because of who his daddy and other family members were, and not because of his own merit.

If I let myself be motivated primarily by bitterness and resentment that other people have it better than me, I'd be a liberal, not a libertarian. There are many millions of people in America who are better off than me, in many cases without having done anything to deserve their good fortune. So what? Doesn't hurt me.

Was Bush mediocre? Sure, maybe. But he was a better choice than Gore and Kerry -- two other mediocre white men who tried to become President after a lifetime of favoritism shown them because of who their daddies and other family members were, and not because of their own merit.

Yet if a similarly mediocre black man with a daddy to smooth his way through life had become President, they would all cry Affirmative Action.

We would probably call him "Harold Ford Junior". :)

"But that's a straw man; there is no such thing as a person nobody will trade with..."

rev, I'm surprised. You don't usually pull things out of your derriere, yet I can see no other source for that idea.

If you think I'm wrong, it should be easy to find an example of a real-life person nobody will trade with. Good luck with that. I have to wonder -- how exactly do you think black people survived during the Jim Crow years? Manna from heaven? :)

But in the segregated South, people loved racists.

You really should stop getting your history lessons from repeated screenings of "In the Heat of the Night".

The kind of hard-core racists who couldn't stomach the idea of interacting with black people in a non-subservient role were a distinct minority in the 1960s South. What they were, was a solid minority bloc of issue voters, like unions, illegal immigration supporters, or hardcore pro-lifers. The vast majority of white Southerners had no particular attachment to racism; they were just used to the way things were. They used the whites-only fountain because that was the law, not because they thought there was something revolting about the blacks-only one.

The Heart of America motel case came about after the CRA struck down Jim Crow by law. The owner liked Jim Crow, and didn't like Negroes staying in his motel.

The Heart of Atlanta Motel wound up bulldozed and replaced by a Hilton. QED. :); 5/27/10, 3:03 PM