Posted on 02/26/2014 7:22:13 PM PST by ReformationFan
Today the conservative talkers are jawing about the supposed "balance" between a person's right not to be discriminated against, and a business owner's rights of conscience. But the problem, you see, is that the first thing is not a right. I don't have a right to force people to like me. Or to hire me. Or to sell something to me.
Someone will say that I do indeed have those rights, as created by the Courts or the Congress or Eric Holder (Fleas Be Upon Him). But the government cannot create rights. Only God can grant rights. And a government that does not protect God-given rights (including and especially the right to property) is not a legitimate government.
Further, a government that does not follow the rules we set for it has no authority to make rules for us. The current regime will not even obey its own laws, much less the laws of God or the Constitution.
There is no "balance" between a "right to be served" and a right to do as I please with what is mine. As a boy I saw signs in diners and other establishments reading, "We Reserve the Right to Refuse Service to Anyone." I'm not sure what they were pre-empting. This was in the middle of farm country; there were no black people to exclude. I always assumed that the owners were giving notice to patrons who might disturb other customers with rowdy behavior. Or perhaps their in-laws. It was none of my business, so I never asked.
Would you say that obnoxious patrons have a "right" to be served? Or does the owner have the right to kick them out? What about drunks – must they be served more alcohol? After all, they have a "disease;" and we surely may not discriminate against sick people?!?
Even today I see signs reading, "No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service." Doesn't this discriminate against the poor? And the overheated? Must my "right" to a reasonably sanitary dining environment be "balanced" against someone else's "right" to be served naked if he so demands? What if the would-be customer cannot pay? May the owner discriminate against him because he is "underprivileged?"
This is all nonsense.
Of course I have the right – even if I don't have permission from the lawless lawmakers – to discriminate against anyone for any reason, or no reason. Now that's usually a bad idea. I'm against it. But if a business owner does not have the right to hire and to serve whom he wishes, his enterprise is not really his. He has lost his freedom of association as well as his right of conscience and his property rights. Why? How did he lose those rights? Did he commit a crime?
Yes, he opened a business.
The issue is not your rights against his. The issue is one of imaginary, man-made, feel-good rights versus real rights. People who insist that one person has a right to compel another to serve him are properly called slavers. And slavers have always felt morally superior. The Civil War and the 13th Amendment didn't stop them; they're going to force you to work for them.
We want America to be an "inclusive" country, say the talk show hosts and guests. Well, of course. But we don't want it to be a police state, where people are mere puppets of the perverse and powerful.
Why is it that so few are outraged by government discrimination – against the rich, against conservatives, against business owners, against oil companies, against whomever doesn't pay a bribe to play the game – but so many are in a tizzy about private discrimination? Government discrimination is unlawful and evil. Private discrimination may be good (such as hiring your nephew), or bad, or neither. In any case, the coercive "cure" for private discrimination is violation of real rights.
This, and not a "balance" of real versus fake rights, should be the conservative argument.
One of the best summaries I’ve ever read . . .
Look the word up. We live in a fascist regime.
Period.
Very good job writing this out.
Very good!
“People who insist that one person has a right to compel another to serve him are properly called slavers.”
And those compelled to give a portion of their earnings to those who have no rightful claim to it are slaves.
The government is slowly dismantling the bill of rights.
bump
Ping for tomorrow
“I quit when medicine was placed under State control some years ago,” said Dr. Hendricks. “Do you know what it takes to perform a brain operation? Do you know the kind of skill it demands, and the years of passionate, merciless, excruciating devotion that go to acquire that skill? That was what I could not place at the disposal of men whose sole qualification to rule me was their capacity to spout the fraudulent generalities that got them elected to the privilege of enforcing their wishes at the point of a gun. I would not let them dictate the purpose for which my years of study had been spent, or the conditions of my work, or my choice of patients, or the amount of my reward. I observed that in all the discussions that preceded the enslavement of medicine, men discussed everything—except the desires of the doctors. Men considered only the ‘welfare’ of the patients, with no thought for those who were to provide it. That a doctor should have any right, desire or choice in the matter, was regarded as irrelevant selfishness; his is not to choose, they said, but ‘to serve.’ That a man’s willing to work under compulsion is too dangerous a brute to entrust with a job in the stockyards—never occurred to those who proposed to help the sick by making life impossible for the healthy. I have often wondered at the smugness at which people assert their right to enslave me, to control my work, to force my will, to violate my conscience, to stifle my mind—yet what is it they expect to depend on, when they lie on an operating table under my hands? Their moral code has taught them to believe that it is safe to rely on the virtue of their victims. Well, that is the virtue I have withdrawn. Let them discover the kind of doctors that their system will now produce. Let them discover, in their operating rooms and hospital wards, that it is not safe to place their lives in the hands of a man whose life they have throttled. It is not safe, if he is the sort of man who resents it—and still less safe, if he is the sort who doesn’t.”
—Ayn Rand, *Atlas Shrugged*
Excellent summary. You have more brains than the Arizona legislature who failed to defend the law they passed with any coherency.
I remember reading that Aloise Hitler ran a Munich beer hall in a building owned by a Jew. When Hitler wanted to knock out some walls to enlarge the place to hold his little fascist get togethers the Jewish owner said no.
Aloise went to his half brother Adolph who was a rising star politician who had friends in High places and forced the owner to let Aloise expand his business which catered to the “right people”.
CC
Except people are too stupid to grasp it. I tried it today. People's intelligence and attention span are such that all they take away is "That guy is mean. Republicans are mean." Not that I'm recommending caving, but it's tough to educate people the NEA has spent generations dumbing down.
Brave New World is coming true
Pressure from the NFL and the Marriot among others came down on Arizona, if they can threaten to boycott Arizona can we not boycott the NFL and the Marriot?
There is a boycott of Girl Scout Cookies due to their disrespect for our values and our children. The Girl Scouts are feeling the pinch. The liberal corporations keep insulting our values but the pendulum may start swinging in the other direction.
Too late. Once this country accepted the civil rights laws that banned discrimination by private entities, the game was over. If you tried to defend freedom of association now, the leftists would scream that blacks would be turned away from restaurants, etc., which is nonsense.
The problem is that nobody trusts the free market. When a business turns customers away, for whatever reason, it loses out to some other business that doesn’t. It all works itself out beautifully when government doesn’t intervene. Government is the only entity that cannot be allowed to discriminate. The Jim Crow laws were put in place by politicians, not business people.
If we don’t have the freedom to discriminate, then we are not free.
What we’re doing to GirlScouts has them outraged. You’re right, we need to target these liberal businesses and franchises.
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