George Will and the Lester Maddox Question

Lewrockwell.com ^ | November 14, 2002 | Myles Kantor

[dyed_in_the_wool]

Hopefully people are beginning to realize that once you start limiting rights in the interest of 'feelings', your moral compass goes away.

[RLK]

When you [Brian Lamb] and I were young people in college, it was an open question whether states had a right to force public accommodations – Lester Maddox’s Pickrick restaurant in Georgia – to take all comers…Well, 50 years later, that’s a stone, cold, dead, closed question, and aren’t we glad? That’s progress. In that sense, we’re less tolerant, but who cares?

---------------------------

I do. The action against Maddox was unconstitutional as hell and enforced involuntary servitude upon Maddox and his employees. The idea of involuntary servitude where the rights of the individual have been sacrificed to servitude of society have since been expanded into politically correct insanity.

[B.Bumbleberry]

Add to this a long list of other affronts to the use of private property by our nanny state, not least of which is the coercion of private businesses to accomodate people with disabilities.

[wideawake]

Lyndon Johnson said it was because "a man has a right not to be insulted in front of his children"

Nowadays, we'd be lucky if they would just acknowledge their children's existence and support them.

Johnson's Great Society can be thanked for that.

[elbucko]

And even if one believes in coercing owners, the federal government wasn't empowered to nationalize this policy, just as it isn't empowered to nationalize policy on burglary or prostitution.

However, the "Dixiecrats" had created a de facto "nation" in the South, not unlike the Confederacy that denied a whole race of citizens the rights protected in the Federal Constitution. Segregation was a form of slavery, in a cold war fashion.

As one who has had business in the area of "public accommodation", I wish I cold have discriminated more than allowed, but more on behavior or ability to pay. Just like guns, it is not the average gun owner that will cause them to be eventually confiscated, but the Lester Maddox types, that will repeal other rights we now enjoy.

[Malesherbes]

George Will is a cafeteria conservative: he just picks the parts he likes.

[Salman]

This article sidesteps the issue of "Jim Crow" laws.

In 1964, some locales already had anti-discrimination laws, some had no laws on the subject and left it up to proprietors who to serve, but Georgia and other southern states had laws requiring racial discrimination.

Don't forget that.

[elbucko]

"...other southern states had laws requiring racial discrimination".

Yup! I went home on leave with a "minority" fellow sergeant to a "deep South" city in the late 60's. The "Jim Crow" laws were so thick, you could slice them with a bayonet. (The Northern cities were just as guilty, in a different way.)

I seriously doubt that a black proprietor of a public business could have refused service to a "majority" person on the same private property grounds that Lester Maddox used to refuse service to "minority" people.

It is precisely this denial of the universality of the constitution that has enabled the Left to expand the Constitution beyond the intention of the Founding Fathers and the good health of this country. We are all the Chief Justice of our own Supreme Court regarding our own personal behavior toward our own fellow citizens.

This may sound "liberal' to some of you bigots, but it's the stuff of which Conservativism is made.

[js1138]

but Georgia and other southern states had laws requiring racial discrimination.

[js1138]

I remember. The correct response for conservatives whould be for the government to butt out and for decent citicens to take a two-by-four the the side of maddox's head.

Just enough to get his attention.

[Huck]

It is precisely this denial of the universality of the constitution that has enabled the Left to expand the Constitution beyond the intention of the Founding Fathers and the good health of this country.

Exactly. Without the Jim Crow South, there would have been no Warren Court, and possibly no Great Society either.

[quark]

"George Will is a cafeteria conservative: he just picks the parts he likes."

Amen. I like Will, but he is a typcial intellectual snob who has lived in the closeted world of academe & the media, and has had little contact with the "unwashed masses."

[Hanging Chad]

"...Lester Maddox’s policy may have been lousy, but his premise remains indispensable..."

Is the author trying to say Maddox may have been "right" but it was for the "wrong" reason?

From what I can tell, there are no "Private Property" rights for a private business.

[Rodney King]

It is precisely this denial of the universality of the constitution that has enabled the Left to expand the Constitution beyond the intention of the Founding Fathers and the good health of this country.

Great Quote!

[ConservativeDude]

Lyndon Johnson said it was because "a man has a right not to be insulted in front of his children"…

I am fascinated by this quote b/c I recently read the Horowitz stuff about framing an issue, and how the socialists consistently do it in a more emotionally appealing way that we do. You must admit that this quote from LBJ is really a brilliant one. The problem from our perspective is that well, under the US constitution, that is simply not true, and certainly there is no federal power to enforce the "right" a man has to not be insulted in front of his children. But note also that my sentence describing what is in the constitution is lengthy and abstract and has emotional force.

My only point is that we need to frame our issues better, more like the way LBJ teed up this one.

[freedumb2003]

>> It is precisely this denial of the universality of the constitution that has enabled the Left to expand the Constitution beyond the intention of the Founding Fathers and the good health of this country. We are all the Chief Justice of our own Supreme Court regarding our own personal behavior toward our own fellow citizens. This may sound "liberal' to some of you bigots, but it's the stuff of which Conservativism is made. <<

It is patently unfair and, more importantly, WRONG, to paint conservatives as "racist" (it is also intellectually easy). We abhor rasicsm and in fact are the highest hope for minorities to throw off the mantle of victimhood and embrace individual responsibility. I suspect you are a liberal, self-hating victim lurker posing as a conservative on this post. We know what happened, we acknowledge Jim Crow and admit what happened in the past with all the comcomitant warts. The difference is we see where we have come, where we can go, despise anything less than seeing ANYONE and EVERYONE as an individual worthy of respect who whould only be judged by their respective actions. Today's conservatives fevrently believe in MLKs ideal of a person being judged by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin. Dems and liberals prefer the latter to continue to subsidize their political positions and jobs.

Step back a few squares and rethink... Unlike liberals, I think most of us will give you a "bye" and ask you to rephrase your post after some thought.

[Marysecretary]

Ever had a disability? Ever have to use a wheelchair to get in and out of places or cross a street? Don't disabled people have any rights?

[AppyPappy]

but Georgia and other southern states had laws requiring racial discrimination.

That's what people miss. Dragging a guy out and beating him because he sat on the wrong stool cannot be defended by anyone. And that's what happened during Jim Crow. Blacks were denied their civil rights and it wasn't a property rights issue.

[AppyPappy]

That's a different matter. People don't erect barriers to keep handicapped people out.