ParanoiA

Ha! You just changed the business model! It's right there in the very text you pasted.

Please stop moving the goal posts. I have consistently denied your claim that vocabulary alone excuses one from this civil rights legislation. I have consistently stated that it is entirely dependent on your business model, as defined by the legislation. And the ACLU agrees, emphatically. Thanks for the link.

In order to be exempt from the civil rights laws, a "private" club must truly reserve its facilities for members, and must have genuinely exclusive membership criteria – a club that will admit anyone who is not African American does not qualify

As I've stated over and over again, you cannot open a restaurant and just call it a "private club" and start discriminating. You must change your business model so it really operates like a club. A club doesn't operate like a "public" establishment. Clubs depend on a membership arrangement that must be qualified - they can't dream up any ole method to establish members.

In addition, in an earlier post you tried to make believe I could do this specifically to get around these laws. And again, your very own source contradicts this in the part you pasted in:

Courts deciding whether a club is “private” in this sense will consider the history and purpose of the club (including whether it was created to circumvent desegregation),

You must operate that restaurant differently than "public" restaurants. Merely assigning different vocabulary doesn't do it.

And, we're back to denying the right to use one's own property as they wish.

It won't really matter until there aren't any more wide open fields.

 

And even then the fences are mostly for show, because, as Penn & Teller demonstrated, they are easily circumvented with a little bit of muscle and know how. They demonstrated how the standard construction methods used on sections of the fence (ironically enough I believe in Arizona) could easily be circumvented with little more than a crowbar.

Is that on Penn & Teller's 'Bullshit'? If so, I don't know how I missed it, but I've got to see it.

So I guess it's you who "clearly (doesn't) understand the Civil Rights Act", sorry.

Wow. You're way, way wrong. Please read the civil rights act of 1964.

I cannot believe you're still pretending as if by calling your business a "private club" - without respect to the business model - excuses you from this Civil Rights act.

Let's re-read section (b) together, shall we?

(b) Each of the following establishments which serves the public is a place of public accommodation within the meaning of this title if its operations affect commerce, or if discrimination or segregation by it is supported by State action:

 

(1) any inn, hotel, motel, or other establishment which provides lodging to transient guests, other than an establishment located within a building which contains not more than five rooms for rent or hire and which is actually occupied by the proprietor of such establishment as his residence;

 

(2) any restaurant, cafeteria, lunchroom, lunch counter, soda fountain, or other facility principally engaged in selling food for consumption on the premises, including, but not limited to, any such facility located on the premises of any retail establishment; or any gasoline station;

 

(3) any motion picture house, theater, concert hall, sports arena, stadium or other place of exhibition or entertainment; and

 

(4) any establishment (A)(i) which is physically located within the premises of any establishment otherwise covered by this subsection, or (ii) within the premises of which is physically located any such covered establishment, and (B) which holds itself out as serving patrons of such covered establishment.

You cannot open a restaurant and call it a private club and then discriminate.

Come on, one doesn't even really have to go to the trouble that I did to prove this out to you - simple logic reveals the utter futility and comedic value of assuming a person can just call his hardware store or motel a "private club" and suddenly get to discriminate. Your business model dictates whether it's public or private - not your vocabulary.

I guess you just completely don't get it whatsoever. You think because it's their equipment that gives them the right to manipulate my traffic. The traffic belongs to me, not them. It is my intellectual property. They are merely providing a common carrier service for my traffic.

That traffic goes through their equipment. They have every right to control it.

The phone company doesn't allow you to hook up any goofy device you want to your phone line and expect it to work either. You must meet their standards before you can use their equipment that way.

Since voice traffic is physically isolated from the signaling and carrier layers they have no fear of harming their network with any creepy calls you want to make.

But there is no such isolation with pure digital. Their servers could crash and burn if you accessed the right virus. No such harmless expectation exists in this business.

So no, I don't get it.

Would you tolerate it if a parcel company accidentally lost one of your belongings and didn't do anything to reimburse you for it? It's their delivery system and their equipment after all! They should get carte blanche to do whatever they want with it. Right? Even if it loses or damages your property. No, that's not how common carriers work. Your property doesn't become theirs because it enters their service. It's still your property and they don't have the right to mutilate or destroy it.

That's an invalid analogy since I never agreed it was ok to destroy your transmission or your intellectual property. They should be able to restrict it, however. The proper analogy would be a parcel service that won't deliver my package at all, for some silly reason they dream up. Yes, I would be pissed. But I have no right to send the government after them to make them carry my package - which could contain a bomb, poison, illicit substances..etc.

They have every right to examine my package, and reject it. It's their facilities at risk here.

No, lack of funds doesn't excuse protecting the citizenry. That's the first job of any legitimate government.

However, I'm not impressed with fences, and other wasteful engineering methods. I'm more impressed with technological solutions. Why don't we hear more about them? Have I been watching too much sci-fi? (it's entirely possible...I mean, the Others were able to keep the smoke monster at bay with technology...)

Ah. Good call. Sorry about that, man.

 

 

The ventilation system idea you guys keeps tossing around is sound in concept, but I think you may be forgetting the installation cost that you are essentially mandating business owners to absorb. Some businesses have incredibly low margins and barely make enough to pay the lease... Let alone get a bunch of work done and systems installed merely so smokers don't have to be asked to go outside.

That's true, but I don't see much in the way of other options. You can't just let people poison the air because you put up a sign that says so. Somehow, it must be isolated, such that workers and customers are entering a "dangerous" environment by their own will.

I don't know, somehow I still feel like I'm contradicting myself. But it's hard to concede to poison release.

I'm just gonna suggest here that you've chosen a very poor analogy. There is mountains of scientific evidence that others smoking around us causes us demonstrable harm and measurable decreases in lifespan. Your freedom to smoke is overturned by your lack of freedom to cause me harm by your smoking.

 

In essence, the law is against gun rights if your bullets keep grazing me, because your freedom to have and use a gun is of less a priority than my freedom not to be harmed by it.

That's exactly what I said in post #22.

The non-smokers are just lucky that the safety issue of smoking trumps any liberty issue of tolerance.

It wasn't meant to be so much a great analogy as much as it was supposed to be a reminder that your enthusiasm for dictating the use of other's property is contingent upon your agreement with those specific policies. Once another group forces something intolerant to your beliefs, I suspect a renewed interest in personal property rights.

And as a libertarian, I'm sad that isolated ventilation systems and or isolated outdoor smoking areas weren't an equitable compromise.

Same here. Someone here at SFN made a great point one time comparing smoke to mustard gas. It really made me think. An isolated ventilation system or outdoor smoking area really is the only solution in my mind. I don't think you can just release toxins in the air and expect everyone to accept the damage - I don't care how minute that damage is estimated to be.

What? It's explicitly called out in the very law you supposedly linked to refute me. Private organizations are not subject to those provisions.

If you want to start a restaurant/business and don't like the Civil Rights Act, simply make your business a private club, and then you are free to control exactly who your customers are and still have complete control over your property. That's all it takes.

There are two issues here. One, you clearly don't understand the Civil Rights legislation you're arguing about as you have restated you believe we can just call something a "private club" and suddenly we can do what we want. That's not true. I provided the criteria, and you just honed in on "public" and thought you found gold.

Two, the way the Civil Rights legislation is actually written, certain types of businesses are considered public by the kind of business they conduct. This is largely because of the source of authority for these laws, which rests on interstate commerce. See Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States.

The Court held that Congress acted well within its jurisdiction of the Interstate Commerce clause in passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, thereby upholding the act's Title II in question.

Title II is the public accommodation provision.

Having observed that 75% of the Heart of Atlanta Motel's clientele came from out-of-state, and that it was strategically located near Interstates 75 and 85 as well as two major U.S. Highways, the Court found that the business clearly affected interstate commerce. As such, it therefore upheld the permanent injunction issued by the District Court, and required the Heart of Atlanta Motel to receive business from clientele of all races.

While the challenge was based on the Commerce Clause (and 5th and 13th amendments), the decision supports the method of how public is defined. Heart of Atlanta Motel would hardly fight in court if they merely needed to call their motel a "private club".

And this is what I mean by smoke and mirrors and make believe bullshit. I'm not trying disparage any particular person's position with that statement, I'm attacking these rationalizations about people suddenly becoming non-people once they trade stuff in a building. The mental gymnastics required to believe this is astonishing to me. And further, that others would actually argue a difference between a business being public and private by the owner merely embracing certain vocabulary - with identical business models. Who seriously believes that makes sense, even if it were true?

I don't see this exchange evolving into anything productive unless you're ready to discuss the assumptions that lead to business entities not being people anymore, that have a right to use their property as they wish. Just like your house.

The ISPs/telcos are spinning this as some form of Internet censorship' date=' when really, what they're trying to preserve is their right to censor certain cost prohibitive parts of the Internet from the customers by deliberately blocking or forging traffic.

 

Net neutrality is really a no brainer to me, but unfortunately, the industry is out in force against it, filling the debate full of fear, uncertainty, and doubt, as illustrated by the powerpoint slide I linked earlier.[/quote']

 

The FCC has done more to ruin freedom of communication than any private force.

 

At the end of the day, your argument is a consumer's argument. You have failed to prove any right to authority over their equipment, absent subsidized services.

 

Your arguments are sound, that is, they are a statement of expectation you wish to place on the business and is quite pluralized. I sure as hell expect access to everything I want. But I have no right to force them to accept content on their servers. Just another extension of the private property use discussion.

 

What if they block a web page that launches a virus? Some idiot could argue that he has a right to that web page, virus or not and expect to force them to have to negotiate dangerous content that jeopardizes their whole network.

 

What if someone wants a "clean" internet experience? The ISP doesn't get to sell that service? Unless the government approves or something?

 

It's not your property. You have no right to dictate how it's used as an authority. Likewise, you have every right to dictate how it's used as a consumer and punish them using your wallet. I will happily join you, and probably scream louder than you on that one.

So, is Menendez supposed to be one of these "many Democrats/liberals?" Because I can't reconcile "object to ANY border enforcement action on an ideological basis" with "Border enforcement is a part of realistic, commonsense reform"

Same here. I can't reconcile "Border enforcement is a part of realistic, commonsense reform.." with "Obama administration's militarization of the border amounts to a submission to the political forces brought by the Republican Party".

Ok, Menendez, is it "part of realistic, commonsense reform" or not? Or is he just pissed because republicans wanted it more?

I guess what he's reacting to is the use of National Guard troops instead of border patrol agents, but the White House has already stated that these units are there solely to assist in spotting border transgressions, and will not actually participate in captures or arrests.

I suppose I should be happy for the step forward, but I'm just not. It's lame. Maybe helping to spot border transgressions is more significant than I want to believe, but it sure sounds like more symbolism. We need armed bad asses along the border that participate in apprehension and preventing entry illegally.

I think that stands for itself...

Right, it's an invalid assumption. Once you make the leap, it's easy to fall the rest of the way down.

This is exactly the private/public dichotomy Ron Paul purports to speak about, and a great compromise between the freedoms of patrons of public establishments and the rights of business owners. If you run a public business the freedoms of the public take precedence, and if you run a private business the freedoms of the business owner take precedence.

Hey, if all you propose is that I call my business a "private club" and suddenly I can enjoy my property as I wish, then great. My next question would be....what exactly is the point in this vocabulary exercise? What do you think you're accomplishing with it?

Don't bother. Because that's not how it works.

http://www.citizensource.com/History/20thCen/CRA1964/CRA2.htm

(b) Each of the following establishments which serves the public is a place of public accommodation within the meaning of this title if its operations affect commerce, or if discrimination or segregation by it is supported by State action:

 

(1) any inn, hotel, motel, or other establishment which provides lodging to transient guests, other than an establishment located within a building which contains not more than five rooms for rent or hire and which is actually occupied by the proprietor of such establishment as his residence;

 

(2) any restaurant, cafeteria, lunchroom, lunch counter, soda fountain, or other facility principally engaged in selling food for consumption on the premises, including, but not limited to, any such facility located on the premises of any retail establishment; or any gasoline station;

 

(3) any motion picture house, theater, concert hall, sports arena, stadium or other place of exhibition or entertainment; and

 

(4) any establishment (A)(i) which is physically located within the premises of any establishment otherwise covered by this subsection, or (ii) within the premises of which is physically located any such covered establishment, and (B) which holds itself out as serving patrons of such covered establishment.

I cannot just open any business I like and call it a private club. I'm forced to use my property a certain way, just to satisfy the populist moral code. I share this moral code and it won't affect me personally, but that's merely incidental and a liberty offense.

Second of all, I'm not crazy about licensing and how it's abused. That's exactly the kind of bureaucratic crap big business loves to see - keep the little competitors to a minimum using government.

All that said, this is a matter of principle that doesn't even make the list of priorities. I don't know a single libertarian, even Rand, that gives a crap about repealing any piece of the civil rights acts. The offense is minimal. There are a ton of other laws that go way further in abridging our liberties than that. And just as much so, the notion that we'd embrace racism all over again and self segregate is to have been raised in a closet for the past 40 years.

Please don't collude TARP with the Obama administration. The bungling (and perhaps malicious aspects) of TARP rests squarely on the Bush Administration/Paulson's shoulders.

This is true. While Obama was involved, it was inherited I think 2 years after inception and clearly doesn't fit with my point at all. I'll happily take that back.

P; On topic, are you suggesting Government by law has imposed integration on patrons of any business?

Well sure, the civil rights act of 1965 does just that. Although, my point was along the lines of forcing someone to use their property in a way that supporters of such ideas might find unnattractive.

It always seems to "make sense" to ban smoking on someone else's property, or force integration in a private business - the essential mainstream position. But, if suddenly smokers lobbied and used the same presumptions of power to control other's property, or per a SCOTUS ruling and they were successful, the mainstream wouldn't like it too much. Imagine the pegoratives aimed at non-smokers for bitching about having to be tolerant of smokers - to be forced to integrate in their favorite restaurant.

Suddenly the notion of private property would receive a renewed appreciation. In my opinion, of course.

In fact, the single best way to achieve such renewed appreciation is to demand our strip clubs to comply to the EOE standard - include men and ugly people, anyone who applies and can dance in the buff. Suddenly, men everywhere would become Rand and Ron Paul supporters...

It never stopped the administration before, I don't see how this possible socialist perception would suddenly pause them now. I'm quite sure that iNow is right, there would most certainly be that kind of backlash - although it would pale in comparison to TARP, the takeover of GM and the Healthcare Bill. It's a disaster, not a variable speed financial crisis.

And if that's true, then I would challenge his leadership. To allow public perception to affect one to the point they fail to do their job is to follow, not to lead.

But I don't think any of that is true. I think Obama has taken a position: that BP ought to clean up their mess and hold them accountable for it. That may conflict with Obama's implied charge to come to the aid of the citizens affected by this spill, and the environmental cost, but that's the complex nature of things. I don't have any issues with how he's handling it, actually. And while I haven't been following this as much lately, I trust he's still holding firm that BP accept their responsibility.

And to BP's credit, what little I've read seems to suggest they're busting their ass to fix it. My objection still lies in the nature of offshore drilling - or as Pangloss critiqued, perhaps deep water drilling.

So far, this seems like a situation where people are doing what they're supposed to be doing, we're just unhappy with the results since it's more complicated than we'd like.

Or, perhaps centralized government is simply the logical outgrowth of the strong evolutionary success experienced by tight well-coordinated and symbiotic troops of organisms. Those who worked together and accepted common rules and behavioral guidelines tended to be much more successful than those who did not. Those who pooled their resources tended to out-survive those who did not. Those who protected others tended to have that protection returned. Government rests on these exact same principles, merely writ large due to our massive population... our ginormous troop.

Think about what you just wrote. You're entirely right about "evolutionary success experienced by tight well-coordinated and symbiotic troops of organisms" - government is merely a tool to that end. That tool is only needed as long as we can't achieve that end without it.

Note that we change tools too, as we evolve. Tools are only needed because of limitations of the human form. I wouldn't need a wrench if I could tighten a bolt by hand.

They are responses to limitations. We already have begun the process of thinking around our evolutionary impulses - such as in-group/ out-group dynamics and so forth. In time, it only stands to reason we won't need a centralized control system to force cooperation.

Also, consider the generalist and the specialist. The specialists go extinct at far greater a rate than generalists. The cost is efficiency. Centralization of behaviors is specialization. It makes more sense to cultivate diversity of thought and behavior in order to maximize our ability to adapt to rapid changes in environment. Libertarianism serves the generalist society.

I apologize for the length, I'm not the most succint individual. I have a lot of passion, and it's difficult to stop my fingers from going and going and going.... Feel free to pay me back in kind, I promise to read every word.

Well' date=' again, it isn't as easy at that. A starving child in a prison camp in Sudan may want to be a U.S. Astronaut, but it almost certainly won't come to be. We are still working out the cooperative skills needed to feed ourselves much less expect some universal achievable dream.

 

As such Libertarianism is a lot like the book "The Secret"... for those who fortune smiles on it seems to work, ignore those left behind in the gutter. I do tend to care about the ones in the gutter as well and think there is a very real need to cooperate rather than insulate ourselves from such people.

 

We have tried a fairly libertarian period in this country and the results were not surprising. We can not help but hurt ourselves, and we find ways always within the confines of law, and without the confines. "Harm" itself is a word that is easy to say but even easier for a lawyer to define as it suits their client.[/quote']

 

You are operating under false assumptions. This largely libertarian society divided a country and fought one of the bloodiest civil wars ever over slavery. Lincoln went to war to preserve the union, but the entire affair was over slavery and the North's disdain for the institution. Libertarian society did this.

 

Civil rights laws only changed the behavior of a minority of americans. A significant size, but still a minority. This is because it takes a majority, or close to it, to get the representation in elected officials to pass such laws. Why didn't we have the civil rights act of 1965 passed in 1865? Society evolves and laws can reflect that evolution - society has to evolve to come to the point to elect people that would then pass laws that reflect that change.

 

You appear to be under the assumption that without laws, people would discriminate like it was 1950 again. People won't because people were already evolving away from that when the civil rights laws of 1965 were passed. The law just effects the behavior of the remaining minority - a minority that would naturally shrink over time, as it has. The civil rights acts did not change the hearts and minds - the bulk of hearts and minds were already changed and thus believed that laws were required to change the remainder.

 

 

Which brings me to institutionalized racism - Jim Crow Laws. On the books from 1876 to 1965 - government enabled prejudice froze this behavior into existence. With a libertarian society, response to societal evolution is instantaneous - laws are not. Anyone who wouldn't agree with such thinking, in a libertarian society, can immediately desegregate themselves and their children and treat others fairly. But laws force them to continue to segregate, and treat them as second class citizens. Only a free society can immediately respond - overnight if they wanted. Laws take lots of time, requires a build up of support and then elected officials are driven by perception and the need to be re-elected and thus you get an extremely lagging response - long after society is ready to change direction.

 

 

The fact of the matter is, people use laws to settle their conscience. Libertarian government is no worse than our non-libertarian government - both require society to evolve in order to change behavior. The only difference is one of them uses laws when they reach critical mass, while the other lets the evolution that got them to critical mass in the first place, to finish the job.

 

 

 

Lastly, there are homeless people running all over downtown. They get fed by the churches here in Kansas City. Your money is not getting to them is it? They are left in the gutter and guess who's helping them: people who are just as free not to help them.

 

This is another example of laws settling our conscience. We think we've addressed the problem since we pass laws to create safety nets, and then we all go to work and pretend like we don't see starving citizens running around. I would contend that safety net laws actually hurt more than no laws at all. It causes people to deflect their attention under the false presumption that government is "taking care of it".

 

So, we're not taking care of people in the gutter - not by government anyway. And we've talked about the poor here having a high standard of living. I have spent most of my life poor. I know exactly what it's like supporting two kids and a wife, living in an all-bills-paid slum, one car (a 78 oldsmobile tank) making 7 dollars an hour. There's nothing fun about it. But we weren't starving either. We had a TV, a camcorder, microwave, musical instruments, furniture, solid living quarters - we were just fine. We just wanted more. And that's cool, but we weren't "in the gutter". And that's the standard of living most of the poor enjoy.

 

No, libertarian federal governing is exactly the way to go. We restore the necessary freedom and liberty and we gaurantee no institutionalized prejudice, and allow soceity to evolve, unfettered by antiquated laws. Let people be free to use their private property as they wish. They will impress you. History has proven it.

 

Keep in mind, it's 2010. No business is going to survive being the least bit racist. In the information age, it can't go unnoticed, and racism is so unacceptable they'll never survive the backlash. And don't forget, we use the "club" excuse to allow discrimination in businesses today, still - it just has to be labeled a "club". Again, more bullshit smoke and mirrors. The laws supposedly designed to end this, are a joke. Free thinking society is responsible for our change - not laws.

 

And I'm stopping here, since I haven't even talked about the moral and ethical violations of taking property and giving it to others. This is too long as it is...

 

I can't seem to unravel this statement. It seems like it is making a point, but the ideas don't seem to mesh. Rather than grasp at the intent, could you rephrase that? Not a knock on you, more of a knock on me.

 

It's a statement about libertarian federalism. I'm almost offended, anymore, that we are required to fight about how we each want to live, forcing one or the other to accept a discomforting quality of life. I'd rather deal with the problems created by each of us moving our political objections to the state level. Allowing more variety among the states gives each of us the opportunity to live under the kind of government we prefer, rather than to be forced to reconcile our preferences into one standard.

 

I would really like you to like libertarianism. But more importantly, I would really like you to be able to live under the kind of rules that make you happiest. Some people like blue, some like red. Why must we insist they accept purple as a compromise?

 

Yes, I realize there are new problems generated by the 50 laboratories approach - but they are a better set of problems to contend with than out of control federalism that is ruining the quality of life for most and is responsible for an empire that has pissed off half the world.

 

Now is the time for libertarianism more than before. We have evolved enough morally to enjoy a much better, and prouder result. Your countrymen will make you proud.

 

I don't disagree, but I see the libertarian knife cutting far to deep as it takes a wickedly cold and actuarial approach to individual success -- in that it cares only for the success and little for the individual.

 

No, the libertarian knife is for freeing the individual from the majority's whims. Libertariansim is about the individual - not really about success at all. You and I can define success differently. Maybe I see success as a musician working at Taco Bell, and I'm content with that. Maybe you need to be a millionaire to be successful - libertarianism is for both of us.

 

Don't forget, libertarianism is a statement about law and governing. Libertarianism isn't a home for greedy rich people, it's a home for freedom loving individuals that abhore investing in government to change society.

 

Government is a response to man's limitations in ethical cooperation. Just as fighting crime carries the ideal of a zero-crime rate, the libertarian philosophy carries the ideal of zero-government. You can't get zero government by growing the relationship between government and man.

 

What are we saying if we invest in and grow a necessary evil?

I don't know if it's a great question (Pangloss), but I'm somewhat curious about the reason for asking it.

 

To my knowledge, who and where guns are allowed are controlled by the States. But yes, I would think the business owner could deny access, where otherwise the law would allow the idea, same with smoking or wearing a shirt or maybe shoes.

I think it's a terrific question.

Here's another one: What if the smokers had used government to force business owners to allow smoking? What if you had to deal with smokers in every restaraunt, by law?

Most would think that to be insanely ridiculous, but it's the same presumption of forcing others to use their own property by some other group's notion of fairness. The non-smokers are just lucky that the safety issue of smoking trumps any liberty issue of tolerance.

I still think the libertarian ideology (actual libertarian, not the billion pretender off-shoots) is an impractical ideology as it requires mechanical thought processes that analogue humanity is simply incapable of as a species.

Could you elaborate on this? Libertarian ideology actually just requires you to let go. Stop controlling everyone else's behavior. Stop pitting ideological classes of people against each other to force one, central, standardized output.

You're free to be as you want to be so long as you don't hurt others and their property. You don't get to control them and they don't get to control you. Each gets to live your respective lives the way you want. And with 50 states, you can each have, essentially, the government you like. Without all the centralization, you can have the variety of state governments that can accomodate the various types of people here.

At the end of the day, I want you and I to both be happy. I'm less inclined to convince you of living life under my kind of government, and more inclined for to enjoy the kind of government you want - just give me the same respect. That's libertarianism.

I was listening to Walter Williams at lunch time, and he asked a question in a way I really appreciated, although I didn't get to hear his answer: If you have one group of people that want government in their lives, safety nets and etc and you have one group of people who want liberty, and the government out of their lives, should they be made to fight each other?

What I hear in his question is more like...why do we require they fight and antagonize each other? Why is it so important to make one group submit to the other, or even both groups compromise at all - when they could each just have their way? Why are we so convinced every freaking issue that comes up needs to be fought and reconciled at the federal level with winners and losers.

Too much federalism. Way too much federalism in our culture.

It's amazing what happens when you break through the thick layers of crap covering the mainstream's ideology, jryan. My advice is to continue thinking that through, and you will find excuse after excuse, exception after exception to their tired old arguments of legislating morality. Of course, then you see the conservatives doing it too...

Could I humbly request that we up the level of discourse a bit here, man?

Actually, I thought you'd appreciate most of those since the bulk of them were used to disparage the convenient out created by distinguishing a different code of ethics for people engaging in trade from people engagin in anything else. Somehow "trading stuff" magically transports us to another reality? I don't think so. Apparently you do.

There exists a pretty significant amount of our history serving as empirical evidence of exactly that happening. What is it' date=' exactly, that allows you to think that would not all happen again? I suggest it is, perhaps, your desire to find evidence in support of your worldview, and that this is directly contrary to what you've argued above that it is a conclusion and and not an approach.

 

Simply stating that it would not happen without these laws in place does not counter the evidence that it has already, and likely will again.[/quote']

 

There exists all of that still. We still create businesses of exclusivity. We still allow discrimination by skin color. The difference is, it's not extended to everyone, but rather a few government approved racial disciminatory businesses.

 

That's cronyism. That's institutionalized prejudice and racism. It's people using government to exclude themselves, while everyone else has to follow a different standard.

 

Let me get this straight, are you actually advocating this?

 

Most of the people of this country are not racists and will not restrict their consumer base and thus their income. They, instead, will all be equal to discriminate just as we do at home, with our friends and every other aspect of our lives. Engaging in trade doesn't transport us anywhere where our principles of liberty are suspended.

 

This is codified in our principle of free trade. It is our belief that engaging in trade, to better the lives of both traders, in which both perceive a gain, is stronger than hate and that some measure of voluntary mutual respect must exist in order for that to happen. That's why we want to be tangled up in trade with everyone on the planet, if we can. The more trading we do, and more we depend on each other, the more we transcend petty differences - and the more petty they become.

 

By the way, how do you think you get a body of congress to pass civil rights laws? You think a minority put them in office? You think a majority of racists accidentally elected a body of non-racist law makers that stabbed them in the back with civil rights laws?

Now that's a rather interesting point. I opened a thread a while back where I tried to touch on the same thing with regards to Austrian economics. Considering the point you've raised' date=' I think a similar issue applies here to libertarianism.

 

These philosophies and ideologies have real world impacts. Is Rand Paul (despite him not being a racist) really willing to tell citizens that they cannot be served due merely to being black, or gay, or democrat, or for wearing a green shirt? Is that how he defines freedom?

 

If so, it sure seems to me that his focus on freedom applies only to business, and not to humans.[/quote']

 

No, it still applies to humans when we apply freedom to business. Business is just the label we give humans engaging in trade. They're the same people they were before they hung signs up and offered stuff for trade.

 

See, this ridiculous partition humans love to throw around here in America is "that's just business" - this notion that there's somehow a different code of ethics to follow when doing business as opposed to all other social activities. This is make believe bullshit. We invent this notion to make it ok to screw people legally, and then still sleep afterwards.

 

I don't know which one leads the other, but this archaic weasle logic has been taken seriously enough that we actually believe there's a difference between iNow the customer and iNow the business owner. There is no difference. It's the same iNow engaging in trade no differently than if we were to swap CD's at his house. We just make believe it's some higher order of activity in make believe land that somehow magically transcends standard ethics and morals and applications of liberty as they apply to everyone else.

 

Freedom to allow people in and out of your home should carry to everything you own, period. It doesn't matter if you're having a garage sale out of your house on a saturday or a permanent garage sale in a building that's not your home - it's the same thing.

 

Rand Paul was initially right, as is his father, as is the libertarian philosophy in being consistent with applications of liberty and one's freedom to use their property as they please. That means being as exclusive as one wishes to be: Guns, race, political affiliation, hair color, freckles, ugly toes, funny looking kids, marriage - whatever the hell they want, just like you do in your own home. That's liberty.

 

The real group missing the boat on this is the majority that actually believe these laws need to be in place. As if these laws are the only thing keeping white folks from economically isolating the black community. Give me a break. There's way more money to made being inclusive, in the major majority of businesses, and since everyone associates the rich as being greedy, I'm not sure why all of the sudden that greed would take a back seat to sticking it to the black man.

 

We've had these conversations before, it's too bad Rand Paul didn't stand up for this when he had the chance. It was a golden opportunity to show how the principles of libertarian philosophy generate a different, real kind of statesman. His father did that. And Rand articulates his views better than his father. What a shame.

 

Use libertarian principles as your guide, but don't be so rigid with those principles that you ignore or disregard their real-world impact of their implementation. Some consequences really aren't acceptable to a free and enlightened society.

 

I disagree with this vehemently. I don't believe one should be picking ideologies as one's guide - ideology is a conclusion not the query. So, one should be clear about liberty and where they stand, and then after observation they would figure out that the libertarian philsophy seems to match what they believe to be right and wrong.

 

So you're essentially asking libertarians to forget about the rigidity of right and wrong and join you and the majority in delusional exception thinking. That's weird, because that kind of expectation completely ignores and dismisses our insistence on consistency and honesty toward individual liberty.

 

No, I don't think anyone should follow their ideology as a guide, and then just chuck the parts that are hard to argue in the modern context. That modern society is so utterly lost and pathetic is not a good reason to join them and sacrifice what we know, or at least believe, to be absolutely right.

 

However just from watching that youtube discussion posted earlier' date=' the point that his comments made to me, is that you don't have to support these businesses if they behave this way.

 

There are 2 kinds of discrimination, you can discriminate against someone because they are in a minority, or you can discriminate in their favor because you fear how it would look because they are a minority.[/quote']

 

Correct, we just choose the latter discrimination method. It is no different than making excuses to abridge freedom of hateful speech. We either stick to a principle or not, otherwise there's no point in creating things like constitutions or pretending to be a nation of laws.

Yeah, I think iNow, Bascule and Ecoli sum up my disappointments right nicely. I lost all respect for him when he bailed out of Meet The Press - that's the perfect place to lay your intellectual case and best chance at being received fairly. But he blew it. And now he's showing his cowardice as he pretends to apologize and take it back, while not actually taking it back...but not actually sticking to it either...I'm not sure what the hell he's saying at this point.

Rand Paul. Grow a spine and take up for your beliefs. Or stop believing them.

(N.B. Not being American, I understand if everything I say is automatically dismissed)

 

"as originally intended" doesn't sound workable to me.

 

For instance, if the question was whether people's "right to bare arms" should be limited to exclude rocket launchers: the right to bare arms doesn't place any explicit limitation on what "arms" actually means because at the time lots of weapons that exist today just hadn't been thought of - there is no original intent.

 

If the text doesn't give a really obvious answer, and having been written hundreds of years ago that's understandable, then that should be fixed. When the text does give a really obvious answer then that should be stuck to - that's why laws are committed to writing in the first place.

I'm sorry, I should have been more inclusive in how I established the thread. Nothing you say would be dismissed at all and we do share so much legal structure.

To your point, I completely agree. As Scalia put it, inferring "intent" or "original intent" misses the point of the limitations also built into that text. For instance, one could conclude that the "right to bear arms shall not be infringed" carried an intent to 'arm the citizenry' and therefore we must ensure citizens are armed - suggesting actively helping the citizens to arm themselves. But, of course, that ignores the qualitative text of "shall not be infringed", which limits the government to only staying out of the way, and that's quite a bit different.

That's not a great example actually, but that's the gist of his point. Purpose and Intent do not naturally contain limitations - yet the text itself does contain limitation. And that limitation is part of the law they passed. They didn't pass "intentions", they passed "laws".

Isn't the attempt to read the constitution and apply it "as originally intended" itself an act of interpretation and subject to personal bias and preference?

Yes. That is exactly the same can of worms as purpose and consequence.

Original Meaning makes the least assumptions and draws on the least amount of subjectivity and personal bias to form conclusions about the text.

Of course, none of the methods, including Strict Constructionism can claim pure fidelity to its authors.

This seems to be an objection based on appearances. I would like to ask everyone to remember how that argument was received when it was used to disparage "spending our way out of debt".

Not to mention, many of us didn't agree with TARP anyway, so thanks for the opportunity to laugh at this mess.

In politics, we often complain about supreme court decisions and how they've expanded power or restricted progress, depending on which side you populate for a given issue. But there is a methodology employed by the justices that direct how they interpret the Constitution.

Needless to say, the depth of jurisprudence creates a wealth of philosophical distinctions and derivatives. If anyone wants to argue or discuss at such depth, that's great and I'm all for it, but I'm thinking it more productive to boil this down to Judicial Conservatism and Judicial Liberalism.

Judicial Conservatism is associated with the Textualist (rejecting non-textual sources), Originalist (closely related to Textualism, particularly Original Meaning) and Strict Constructionist (to construe the text strictly - often misapplied to Originalists, like Scalia). John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas are current Judicial Conservatives, mainly of the Originalist camp.

Judicial Liberalism is associated with the Living Constitutionalist (that the document has dynamic meaning, to flex with evolving society). Derivatives include the Pragmatist (appeals to anachronistic shortcomings), and those focused on Intent (belief that the founders actually intended such flexibility). Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor are current Living Constitutionalists. Elena Kagan has also claimed the Living Constitution method.

Judicial Moderacy is a mix of the two above, usually labeled as the swing vote. Anthony Kennedy and Sandra Day O'Connor are such.

Stephen Bryer has stated there are 6 tools used by justices:

1) The text itself

2) History of the statute or provision

3) The tradition that surrounds the words

4) Precedent

*5) Purpose or Value encoded in the statute

*6) Consequences of the ruling

5 and 6 are generally where the Living Constitutionalist and Originalist part ways. To the originalist, Purpose and Consequence are far too personal and subjective to weild without violating the separation of powers. They are instruments of legislative creation, which is supposed to be left to the Legislature and in part by the Executive. They appeal to the amendment process to update and evolve the document to match society's changing values and ethics.

Obviously, I definitely fall into the category of Judicial Conservatism. Namely, the Original Meaning. Original Intent is far too precarious and essentially employes the same subjective tools as Purpose and Consequence. This is a relatively new discovery for me.

In fact, I'm actually far more drawn to Strict Constructionism, however that only works if the document is written for strict interpretation - and as well all know, the Constitution is not written that way at all.

So, what about you guys? Does your preferred intrepretation methodology essentially match your ideological position? I believe it is possible to be a judicial conservative while maintaining a strong liberal preference in law. And vice versa.

Edit: Crap, I forgot to add the poll. Ah well...