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> but a private person should be able to choose whom he serves by whatever criteria they see fit I don't know what to tell you on this topic other than "You mi

> but a private person should be able to choose whom he serves by whatever criteria they see fit I don't know what to tell you on this topic other than "You missed the lessons of the 1960s." The soul of the racist was bared in the fight and it was found to contain nothing but fear and traditional power-lust. Their privilege of calling the shots on this topic was stripped with cause... Not by power-mongers or politicians, but by the people, by a generation coming to feel nauseated at the kind of naked belief in racial superiority that enabled the sins of the past. The ERA and related Acts were fairly unprecedented, but passed for a very good reason. And you're right; they are a curtailment of liberty. Most laws are, but we're a country of 330 million people; nobody expects the same laissez-faire approach that worked for a country of 100,000 to work today, right? Do you also rail against the right denied to pilots to buzz a plane twenty feet over your house, or the right denied to motorists to drive on the left side of a divided public road? From whence, then, the umbrage at the notion that a person cannot be fired based on some made-up drop-of-blood rules, or tossed out of a restaurant for having skin darker than the table they're sitting at? I don't disagree the country was founded on the notion that racism was acceptable. I'd hope it'd be self-evident why we are doing the work to jettison that cornerstone. For what liberty can a man truly have when even the provision of water and bathrooms are arrayed against him for something as irrelevant as the color of his skin?

thegrimmest 4y ago
The country was founded on the notion that individual liberty was the most important concern. It's right there in the text. You can have equality of rights under law (yes please!) without infringing on other's rights to live as they please. Expand the scope of liberty, but leave the definition alone. > nobody expects the same laissez-faire approach that worked for a country of 100,000 to work today, right? This argument supposes that the only factor in liberty is scale. It seems to be far more complicated than that - there are far smaller and far more collectivist nations. The point is that you can jettison racism (or any other kind of inequality) while leaving the racists alone. All people need to be is equal under law. > For what liberty can a man truly have Being free doesn't mean you're entitled to relationships (personal or professional) with others. It means you're free to navigate these without interference. Just like every other free person, you are born with nothing. Everything that you obtain you do so by negotiating with people.
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  > You can have equality of rights under law (yes please!) without infringing on other's rights to live as they please I think I may need firmer definitions of terms to accept this assertion. Because unless I've misunderstood your meaning, it sounds like this is unworkable. Every law is a curtailment of an otherwise-existant naturally occurring right to do something; the law says, in the universe of all possible things you could do, here is something you must do or must not do, yes? But for the law, I could keep all my money, but we pay taxes. But for the law, I could steal all my neighbor's stuff, but we have property rights. Etc. Social contract theory (a false story of how we got to governments and civilization, but a useful fairy-tale for thought-framing purposes) tells the story of the rights / protections tradeoff, but the first step of the tradeoff is we give up some liberties. So clearly, individual liberty isn't the most important concern; if it were, we'd have solved the problem by never forming a government. Rather, the Constitution appears to lay out several overlapping goals alongside "secur[ing] the blessings of liberty." "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity." The blessings of liberty are important, but so is the general welfare, domestic tranquility, common defense, and a more perfect Union, etc. > The point is that you can jettison racism (or any other kind of inequality) while leaving the racists alone. All people need to be is equal under law. Again, we may be talking past each other if we're operating from different definitions, but how do you do that? The racist wants to operate a business where black people need not apply, nor may they sit at the table. How on Earth do we respect their liberty while preserving the right of every citizen to operate as a citizen? If I understand your meaning correctly, I predict your answer is "one cannot," in which case I direct us back to the Constitution and the note that there are other sometimes-competing objectives alongside the preservation of liberty (it's hard, we discovered, to preserve tranquility or have a more perfect union if a huge chunk of our population just gets to pretend some of our citizens aren't equally citizens in private affairs, not only before the eyes of the law. Hard to the point of unworkable. Violence-in-the-streets unworkable). > Being free doesn't mean you're entitled to relationships (personal or professional) with others Quite true. But it is entirely possible that being a citizen obligates such relationships, in specific contexts, at specific times, and there's a compelling reason to force such relationships (under the very narrowly-tailored privilege of "Owning one's own business," for example). > Just like every other free person, you are born with nothing Goodness is that ever untrue. For example, you're born with your skin, whether or not it will provide you some net advantages or disadvantages because of the complex sociopolitics that already existed before you came into the world. You don't get to choose it; it's just your birthright.

thegrimmest 4y ago

The country was founded on the notion that individual liberty was the most important concern. It's right there in the text. You can have equality of rights under law (yes please!) without infringing on other's rights to live as they please. Expand the scope of liberty, but leave the definition alone. > nobody expects the same laissez-faire approach that worked for a country of 100,000 to work today, right? This argument supposes that the only factor in liberty is scale. It seems to be far more complicated than that - there are far smaller and far more collectivist nations. The point is that you can jettison racism (or any other kind of inequality) while leaving the racists alone. All people need to be is equal under law. > For what liberty can a man truly have Being free doesn't mean you're entitled to relationships (personal or professional) with others. It means you're free to navigate these without interference. Just like every other free person, you are born with nothing. Everything that you obtain you do so by negotiating with people.

shadowgovt 4y ago
> You can have equality of rights under law (yes please!) without infringing on other's rights to live as they please I think I may need firmer definitions of terms to accept this assertion. Because unless I've misunderstood your meaning, it sounds like this is unworkable. Every law is a curtailment of an otherwise-existant naturally occurring right to do something; the law says, in the universe of all possible things you could do, here is something you must do or must not do, yes? But for the law, I could keep all my money, but we pay taxes. But for the law, I could steal all my neighbor's stuff, but we have property rights. Etc. Social contract theory (a false story of how we got to governments and civilization, but a useful fairy-tale for thought-framing purposes) tells the story of the rights / protections tradeoff, but the first step of the tradeoff is we give up some liberties. So clearly, individual liberty isn't the most important concern; if it were, we'd have solved the problem by never forming a government. Rather, the Constitution appears to lay out several overlapping goals alongside "secur[ing] the blessings of liberty." "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity." The blessings of liberty are important, but so is the general welfare, domestic tranquility, common defense, and a more perfect Union, etc. > The point is that you can jettison racism (or any other kind of inequality) while leaving the racists alone. All people need to be is equal under law. Again, we may be talking past each other if we're operating from different definitions, but how do you do that? The racist wants to operate a business where black people need not apply, nor may they sit at the table. How on Earth do we respect their liberty while preserving the right of every citizen to operate as a citizen? If I understand your meaning correctly, I predict your answer is "one cannot," in which case I direct us back to the Constitution and the note that there are other sometimes-competing objectives alongside the preservation of liberty (it's hard, we discovered, to preserve tranquility or have a more perfect union if a huge chunk of our population just gets to pretend some of our citizens aren't equally citizens in private affairs, not only before the eyes of the law. Hard to the point of unworkable. Violence-in-the-streets unworkable). > Being free doesn't mean you're entitled to relationships (personal or professional) with others Quite true. But it is entirely possible that being a citizen obligates such relationships, in specific contexts, at specific times, and there's a compelling reason to force such relationships (under the very narrowly-tailored privilege of "Owning one's own business," for example). > Just like every other free person, you are born with nothing Goodness is that ever untrue. For example, you're born with your skin, whether or not it will provide you some net advantages or disadvantages because of the complex sociopolitics that already existed before you came into the world. You don't get to choose it; it's just your birthright.