Ron Paul the Racist

[onmyknees]

A tedious and utterly predictable discussion between Ron Paul and Tingles Matthews. Of all the potential questions he could have asked, or all the seemingly insurmountable issues facing our country, Tingles falls back to the tried and true "When did you Stop Beating Your Wife" line , or in the case of MSNBC...you must be racist if you don't worship liberal policies. He starts out by saying he understands libertarianism, but he's obviously fucking clueless ! But this is not new...they tried this angle on Rand as well. Here's a fat liberal upper middle class white guy more obsessed with race than the New Black Panthers! Does any black American really think Ron or Rand Paul are racist ...do they really think they're the enemy? In the abstract it could be an interesting discussion, but when it's the same thing night in and night out...it becomes a pattern...Like him or not, Ron Paul understands the Federal Reserve and monetary policy better than anyone else in Congress, but Tingles can't fuck with him on that, so let's play the ace of spades...slap the race card down. But this is the tactic of liberals like Tingles and Olbermann...and I've been saying it for years. Trouble is....Ron isn't buying it. Tingles has his marching orders....tear down and dehumanize by any means necessary any opponent of The Chosen One. Get the race card out there early and often. What a disgusting human being. And they wonder why we hate them ? But appearently most Americans feel as I do because the Home Shopping Channel and Nancy Grace have better ratings !


http://www.mrctv.org/embed/101763

[trish]

Rand Paul claims anyone who supports government sponsored healthcare endorses slavery! His father Ron thinks it's wrong for a corporation to refuse to hire African/Americans as executives or ban them from their boards and staffs, but Ron supports their "right" to do so. I take it you agree. So what would you say about the "right" of a university to ban firearms from its campus, or the "right" of a business to ban them from its establishment? Ron is of the opinion that property rights trump civil rights. Ron and Rand insist they are not racist, and indeed it may be true that they bear no one ill-will; but their brand of hard core libertarianism grants safe harbor to all sorts of racist practices.

Ron's position on heroin is now well known. He believes you have a "right" to own and consume heroin. Of course not a legal right. But he thinks you "should" have that legal right. You have, according to Ron, a sort of innate property right to heroin ownership. He doesn't say anything about the source of that right or its nature, but he's sure you have that "right" in the sense that the "right to heroin ownership" should be encoded into law. He may be right. But this doesn't stop at heroin. His point is that this right-to-ownership is universal. It applies to all any sort of thing. You should be able to own any sort of thing and once you own it do anything with it that your heart desires. Of course there are exceptions to that right. Rand implies as much when he makes his "healthcare-implies-slavery-argument". You can't own people and do with them what you will. But if there are exceptions how are we to ascertain what those exceptions are? How is Ron so sure heroin isn't an exception? So there are exceptions to what sort of things can be owned, like people and nuclear weapons. There are also exceptions to that part of the rule that says once-you-own-a-thing-you-can-use-it-in-any-way-you-please. Should you be allowed to discharge your firearm in your backyard in a crowded city? Should you be allowed to play your stereo in the back yard at full volume any time of day? Should you be allowed to set fire to your home if it strikes your fancy to do so? How does one determine the exceptions? How is it that Ron is so sure the Civil Rights Act isn't a viable exception? He never says. His whole argument is simply: the Civil Rights Act conflicts with your universal right-to-do-whatever-you-please-with-your-own-property.

The fact is there are no metaphysically given or god given rights. There is no universal right-to-property out there waiting to be discovered by enlightened human beings. Human beings themselves are the source of rights, laws, moral codes etc. Over time we have evolved some that work very well and some that don't. At one time American businesses had the right to deny services on the basis of race. In spite of Ron Paul we've progressed beyond that point.

[Silcc69]

Ron Paul was also against these Bush led wars.

[trish]

Ron Paul was also against these Bush led wars.Yes, and I appreciated his vote. On that issue he and I accidentally came to the same conclusion.

[Ben]

On quite a few issues Ron Paul is outstanding.
However, I don't want him to be president. He's actually in favor of free markets. Which literally means: no government intervention. Which means: no minimum wage laws, no child labor laws etc. etc. etc. The economy, without state intervention, would self destruct in 5 minutes.
We saw what happened in '08 when the financial sector approximated so-called free market conditions.
But as Ron Paul stated: in free markets you wouldn't bailout the big banks. There would've been a market correction, as it were. And there would've been a painful process. But, ultimately, the economy would recover... and be a helluva lot healthier.
Again, Paul views the economy as sick -- and it needs to recover.

YouTube - Ron Paul admits he would not have ordered the bin Laden kill (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEHhH96T5MI)

[trish]

But as Ron Paul stated: in free markets you wouldn't bailout the big banks. There would've been a market correction, as it were. And there would've been a painful process. But, ultimately, the economy would recover... and be a helluva lot healthier. A key word here is "ultimately". How soon is that? Healthier when? Ultimately? Is that any sooner than the recovery we're on now? Any healthier? If so, why? Libertarians just assume the markets seeks an equilibrium and that equilibrium, presuming it exists, is the best of all possible worlds. Wouldn't [it] be a miracle if we never really have to concern ourselves with political freedom, justice and security; that all these things just take care of themselves when all market forces are left unrestrained?

[hippifried]

Yes it's painful, but I'm with OMK on this one. I quit paying any attention to Chris Matthews a long time ago, for the reasons already stated. I think he's vile & insidious. I don't think he's worse than the right wing haters, but he's really no better. He's usually a lot more subtle though. I saw that interview & it made me cringe the way every answer was twisted. Disgusting.

As for Ron Paul: I really don't see him as libertarian. I don't see modern libertarianism as libertarian. What I see is a misnamed political movement for philosophical property fanatics & the cult followers of Ayn Rand. I don't really have a problem with the idea of private property per se'. As an American, it's pretty hard not to undersand it. But a philosophical abstract concept isn't the be all & end all of everything social. The egoists are even farther off in the ozone with the claim that altruism is non-existent. I don't have a problem with ideology, but I do have a problem with attempts to engineer society around any single ideology. Might as well create a theocracy.

Are the Pauls racist? I think not. They're just fanatic ideologues. Ron Paul doesn't like the Civil Rights Act, but he doesn't lide the Jim Crowe laws either. He makes the claim that there probably wouldn't have been so many segregation problems in the first place if governments hadn't made segregation mandatory. He's consistant in his view as a government minimalist. I don't buy it. I think it's a pipe dream, & the minimalism couldn't work once the Jim Crowe laws wer on the books.

[Ben]

A key word here is "ultimately". How soon is that? Healthier when? Ultimately? Is that any sooner than the recovery we're on now? Any healthier? If so, why? Libertarians just assume the markets seeks an equilibrium and that equilibrium, presuming it exists, is the best of all possible worlds. Wouldn't [it] be a miracle if we never really have to concern ourselves with political freedom, justice and security; that all these things just take care of themselves when all market forces are left unrestrained?

Exactly. That's why I don't believe in free markets. It's, well, a pure fantasy. And, too, true free marketeers believe in a utopian vision of society. Which is somewhat naive and childlike. I just don't think it's realistic. Again, free markets mean NO state intervention. So, well, we'll have to privatize the police and fire and on and on....
And, Trish, Ron Paul said it'd take about a year for markets to correct themselves. Do you believe him??? (Just to add: I do think Ron Paul is sincere about his belief in the Austrian School of Economics. His belief in Hayek and Von Mises and unfettered free markets. That if you free business up from State control, well, everything will be hunky dory... :))
I like what Naomi Klein said about the Chicago School. These guys -- Milton Friedman and Gary Becker etc... -- approached economics as a hard science. Like physics.
Well, it isn't. It is not a hard science.

YouTube - Hayek on Milton Friedman and Monetary Policy (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXqc-yyoVKg)

[Silcc69]

The freemarket does sound good but we have government intervention because people are greedy and will screw over whoever to make big bucks. We already see it now with so much business being shipped overseas.

[Stavros]

The contradiction in the anarchism that is at the root of Robert Nozick, Hayek, and to some extent Friedman's ideas is that they want minimal government, yet want government to put into law the 'rights' that would make people 'free'. I don't know much about the Paul, but the idea that an individual should have the right to inject themselves with heroin is not new; when Margaret Thatcher made libertarianism respectable, there was a book of essays ('The New Right Enlightenment') in which one writer argued it was no business of the government if someone wanted to shoot up: the obvious problem is that if the addict has to rob, injure maybe even kill to get the money to get high, he/she has 'harmed others' and crossed that precious boundary. Moreover, government has intervened to regulate markets because unfettered markets can create the conditions for monopolies, which happened in the US in the last quarter of the 20th century -the Sherman Act which was used in 1911 to break up Rockefeller's Standard empire was thus not anti-capitalist, but a form of competitive correction. As usual we end up with the perennial question: not do you want government, but what do you want government to do, and how far should it go when intervening in the lives of the citizens? And it doesnt take long for libertarians when they become elected politicians with budgetary responsibilities to lose their enthusiasm for 'freedom' -just as lefties have entered office determined to 'change the structure of society' and ended up just making a mess. Ultimately, pragmatism in government is the most flexible, and workable policy platform.

[onmyknees]

Rand Paul claims anyone who supports government sponsored healthcare endorses slavery! His father Ron thinks it's wrong for a corporation to refuse to hire African/Americans as executives or ban them from their boards and staffs, but Ron supports their "right" to do so. I take it you agree. So what would you say about the "right" of a university to ban firearms from its campus, or the "right" of a business to ban them from its establishment? Ron is of the opinion that property rights trump civil rights. Ron and Rand insist they are not racist, and indeed it may be true that they bear no one ill-will; but their brand of hard core libertarianism grants safe harbor to all sorts of racist practices.

Ron's position on heroin is now well known. He believes you have a "right" to own and consume heroin. Of course not a legal right. But he thinks you "should" have that legal right. You have, according to Ron, a sort of innate property right to heroin ownership. He doesn't say anything about the source of that right or its nature, but he's sure you have that "right" in the sense that the "right to heroin ownership" should be encoded into law. He may be right. But this doesn't stop at heroin. His point is that this right-to-ownership is universal. It applies to all any sort of thing. You should be able to own any sort of thing and once you own it do anything with it that your heart desires. Of course there are exceptions to that right. Rand implies as much when he makes his "healthcare-implies-slavery-argument". You can't own people and do with them what you will. But if there are exceptions how are we to ascertain what those exceptions are? How is Ron so sure heroin isn't an exception? So there are exceptions to what sort of things can be owned, like people and nuclear weapons. There are also exceptions to that part of the rule that says once-you-own-a-thing-you-can-use-it-in-any-way-you-please. Should you be allowed to discharge your firearm in your backyard in a crowded city? Should you be allowed to play your stereo in the back yard at full volume any time of day? Should you be allowed to set fire to your home if it strikes your fancy to do so? How does one determine the exceptions? How is it that Ron is so sure the Civil Rights Act isn't a viable exception? He never says. His whole argument is simply: the Civil Rights Act conflicts with your universal right-to-do-whatever-you-please-with-your-own-property.

The fact is there are no metaphysically given or god given rights. There is no universal right-to-property out there waiting to be discovered by enlightened human beings. Human beings themselves are the source of rights, laws, moral codes etc. Over time we have evolved some that work very well and some that don't. At one time American businesses had the right to deny services on the basis of race. In spite of Ron Paul we've progressed beyond that point.

"Rand Paul claims anyone who supports government sponsored healthcare endorses slavery! His father Ron thinks it's wrong for a corporation to refuse to hire African/Americans as executives or ban them from their boards and staffs, but Ron supports their "right" to do so. I take it you agree. So what would you say about the "right" of a university to ban firearms from its campus, or the "right" of a business to ban them from its establishment? Ron is of the opinion that property rights trump civil rights. Ron and Rand insist they are not racist, and indeed it may be true that they bear no one ill-will; but their brand of hard core libertarianism grants safe harbor to all sorts of racist practices."

You take wrong...You obviously have little understanding of true
libertarianism. Here what Rand's point was and I think you know this but you chose to short sell what he was saying....just as you did when he was discussing the '64 Civil Rights Act. Rand was explaining that if you are mandated by law to purchase health insurance than by extension there has to be someone to provide you with that service or what would be the point...therefore as a physician he was drawing a point that someday he would be forced to service these people by conscription and that the government would determine how much he could charge and how much profit he could take.....similar to what occurs to a lesser degree in Medicare and Medicaid. Did he use the word slavery? Yes, he did and he might have been advised against it for overly race sensitive people like you who choose to discard the intellectual argument behind what he was saying. If this wasn't a habit with you, one might overlook it, but you haven't met a conservative that according to you isn't racist. Cry wolf somewhere else....the race baiting is played out. Understanding conservatives and libratarians, I really don't think Ron or Rand see the world or it's citizens in terms of black and white like you do. That's the difference between you and them, and me. You see everyone and everything in terms of color, race or special interest group. That's what liberals do...pander to groups and convince them they're entitled and in so doing create a life long dependency and constituency.

Ron's point about the civil rights act was that men created the Jim Crow laws making it necessary to negate them by the '64 act. In his view of things, had there not been Jim Crow laws, then there would never have been a need for the latter. it's an intellectual rather than an emotional interpretation of the constitution. I'm not saying I fully agree, but then again I don't see a racist behind every tree either. It's a pity you can't appreciate what they're saying because of your dogma. You like some others on here like to create the perception that you're so open minded...when the fact of the matter is you have almost no tolerance for opposing views. You're like Rachel Maddow on roids.
If you really think Ron Paul is a racist, or even says racist things...there's not much anyone can do to help you with your problem. It amazes me ....We have opened a 3rd war in the Arab world, Obama seemingly has reversed himself on his domestic drilling policy ,unemployment hovers well over 9%, The housing market remains in depression, The SSI and Medicare release their disturbing new data about solvency, and an announced presidential candidate, Ron Paul appears on MSNBC and they ask him about his intellectual interpretation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and it's constitutionality because they know libs like you trolling for racial content will slop it up....real relevant. Get a clue Trish.

[Stavros]

Rand was explaining that if you are mandated by law to purchase health insurance than by extension there has to be someone to provide you with that service or what would be the point...therefore as a physician he was drawing a point that someday he would be forced to service these people by conscription and that the government would determine how much he could charge and how much profit he could take.....similar to what occurs to a lesser degree in Medicare and Medicaid.

I dont know precisely how Medicare and Medicaid work there, but when the National Health Service was being set up here in 1948-49 the deal was that the population would have the cost deducted from their salary whether they like it or not, and doctors would be employed by the government department of health in hospitals or general practice -however, the deal also included the provision which allows qualified doctors to work privately: this means that doctors who forge a career in the hospital sector in their speciality, can set up their own or work in a private clinic: in practice this tends to mean senior doctors who can organise their rota so that they work in both sectors. General Practitioners will also have special interests, and can also organise their surgery commitments to give them 'time off' for private work. It is also the case that private patients wings in public hospitals were useful money earners -I recall the 1970s when wealthy Arabs from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf were using our services before they built their own hospitals. I think that had the government outlawed the private sector, the system would never have worked: medical students might have stayed on for a few years experience and then decamped to the US/Canada or wherever.

For Paul my guess is that he would argue that rather than take the cost of health out of their wages, people should have the right/be free to buy it through a health protection fund or whatever. The strength and weakness of the UK system is that the amount paid is not too great: slightly less than income tax, it is weighted so that higher earners pay more, and unemployed pay nothing, but the service is free at the time of use, excluding expensive new drugs and surgical procedures. The weakness is that the system costs the earth, and employs a lot of people who are just pushing paper around. The principle is what you have to decide on: do you want state funding of health care, or do you want it private, and can there be a mixed sort of like a 'private-public partnership'. Paul's language probably lets him down, but the debate is one that the USA has to try and resolve, even though there are fears in the UK that the govt wants to cut pieces off from our system and put it into the private sector, its a universal debate on one level. Of course if people lived healthier lifestyles then the cost of care would be reduced, or maybe its like the 'peace dividend' and will always cost...

[trish]

Rand was explaining that if you are mandated by law to purchase health insurance than by extension there has to be someone to provide you with that service or what would be the pointIf you can't find a private insurer then the government will be your insurer, so there is always provider. Where's the slavery? Do you or Rand even know what a slave is?


therefore as a physician he was drawing a point that someday he would be forced to service these people by conscription(Boldface mine)

So here, according to OMK, is Rand's argument:

Premise) You may find your own insurance provider if you wish, but if you don't you will be covered by a government plan and taxed for the coverage.

Conclusion) Physicians will be conscripted and forced to provide medical services.

I'm at a loss to name the specific rule of logic that allows one to draw the above conclusion from the given hypothesis. Is it modus ponens? How about modus tollens. Is it reductio ad absurdum? (Hint: "by extension" is a rhetorical expression, not a rule of logic.) If Rand is making a point here, it's not a rational one.


If this wasn't a habit with you, one might overlook it, but you haven't met a conservative that according to you isn't racist.Reread my post. I quite specifically did not call Rand or Paul a racist, but of course facts mean nothing to you if you think you can score a rhetorical point.

[hippifried]

Randian egoism has never been rational. It's based on a false premise. She took one aspect of human nature & jumped to the conclusion that there was nothing else. Pfffft! It's simplistic, childish, & nihilistic. It doesn't work in the real world.

[longhorn]

Ron Paul's amazing Ron paul 2012

[NYBURBS]

OK few things here. First, one can quite rationally differentiate between those parts of the civil rights laws that forbid government sponsored/mandated/assisted segregation and those parts that forbid private business owners the right to decide whom they wish to associate with. As has been written in various First Amendment court decisions, the freedom to associate inherently comes with the freedom not to associate. Without the second, the first is rather meaningless. I personally think someone is an ass if they want to exclude someone merely because of their race, but of course the civil rights laws also exclude people from refusing to associate on other grounds, for instance religion. I would personally not want to associate with members of certain religious groups/sects, and I don't see it being the business of the government to tell me otherwise.

Second, there is a distinct difference between laws that regulate or forbid certain actions that bring harm to innocent third parties, and those that seek to direct or criminalize personal decisions that, in and of itself, affect no one but the people making them. I think most of us would agree that shooting heroin is a poor decision, but so are any other number of behaviors that we do not criminalize. Now if you use drugs and then operate heavy machinery on a public street, then you're endangering innocent 3rd parties, and the government has every right to criminalize that sort of behavior. It's the same approach we take towards consuming alcohol or smoking in many public places.

Lastly, we have never had a truly free market in this country, and probably never will. However, proposing to minimize governmental attempts to pick winners and losers, does not equate to some wild wild west society where people possess nukes or build bombs in their back yards. Government spending and regulation tends to be abused in the long haul by those that are typically attracted to the institutions of power, and quite a few people think that we would be better off with far less control over the market, while at the same time forcing businesses to face the consequences for poor decision making on their part. Many "liberals" rail and rage against corporate greed, but those large corporations often ensure their massive profits by swaying (read bribing) politicians to pass laws that protect their particular business while at the same time hampers attempts by would-be competitors.

[trish]

the freedom to associate inherently comes with the freedom not to associate.Premise: You have the freedom to associate with whomever you please.
Conclusion: If you have a business, then you have the freedom to choose not to do business with African/Americans.

What rule of logic allows one to draw the conclusion from the premise? Modus tollens? The "law of logical inheritance?" "Inherently" is not descriptive of a rule of logic. The freedom to which premise refers makes perfect sense with or without the freedom to which the conclusion refers. The suggestion that "freedom to associate" requires the "freedom to discriminate in business" is simple philosophical nonsense. The Civil Rights Act, btw, does not make it illegal for you personally to discriminate on the basis of ethnicity; but rather it is aimed at providing equal opportunity in the marketplace. It protects the freedom of the marketplace against the assault of bigotry. The alleged right that you can do anything you wish with your property is anathema to individual freedom and anathema to freedom of the market. Markets that are free to react to market forces are markets that are protected against political, religious and other external forces. On the other hand, markets that are totally free to react only to market forces will eventually be dominated by a handful of players. (See the theorems of Morgenstern and Von Neumann). Reasonably free, fair and stable markets are regulated by a government of, by and for the people. The libertarian movement to limit government is a movement to diminish the power of the people to govern themselves. It's effect will be to place that power in the hands of the dominate market players.

[hippifried]

Okay Burbs,

First: While I agree that the "right of association" (which is not in the Constitution by the way) is an innate natural right, the Civil Rights Act isn't about association or even the choice to be an asshole. It's a protection of the public. If you want to make the leap that association equates to whom you do business with, then the choice was already made when that business was opened to the public. You can do private memgership crap, but if you want the market share that "open to the public" pretty much assures, then you have to foliow the same rules as everybody else. You have no "right" to blow off the rules of society if you want to live in it & profit from that association. This is especially true when a business is incorporated, like Woolworth's.

Second: I agree with the libertarian stance on drugs. It's just a lot of bullshit left over from the bado old days of Victorian social repression that culminated in the Comstock laws, prohibition, the Mann Act, ad nauseum... Prohibition literally creates crime, & adds to the pool of people who partake in whatever's prohibited. While billed as a protection of the public, it removes the protective layer of respect for law & the moral code. It's stupid & counterproductive.

Lastly: There's no governmental attempt to pick winners & losers. This is a false premise that way too lmany arguments have been based on lately. But it's always something, ain't it? Every time you think you've got some bogus shit debunked, somebody just craps another pile.
Regulation of the financial markets is about promoting competition in all markets. Again, it's a public protection. Lack of regulation allows monopolists to flourish every time. When monopolies take over industry, monopolists are only ones who thrive, & only if they're the ones in control. It's a form of feudalism. I don't know about you, but I don't want to be a serf. It's happening now. All this money in the markets isn't "producing" anything. It's all geared toward corporate acquisitions. They're just buying up each other & consolidating. Warren Buffet may be giving away a big chunk of his personal fortune, but he has that fortune because Berkshire Hatheway has been buying up everything & everybody. I'm pretty sure they're the biggest culprit in moving American manufacturing offshore. This way the corporations that are owned by the corporation can bribe authorities in foreign countries cheaper than they can here. Everybody blamed China when kids started getting poisoned by their toys. The Chinese appeased the whiners by executing some bureaucrat. But wasn't Mattel in charge of their own quality control? Wouldn't that be dictated by the market? Not when you're that big. Everything, including the public safety & lives, has a dollar value assigned to it, as if that's all that matters in this world. It really isn't. Not everything has a market solution. Society is all about pooling resources for mutual benefit. That's what governance is all about. That's what the capital markets are all about. They just have a much narrower scope. Minimalism isn't a solution to anything. No fanaticized ideology is. We just need a smart pragmatic approach to governance that can roll with reality.

[NYBURBS]

Reasonably free, fair and stable markets are regulated by a government of, by and for the people. The libertarian movement to limit government is a movement to diminish the power of the people to govern themselves. It's effect will be to place that power in the hands of the dominate market players.

OK, not to ignore the rest of your post, but I think what I quoted is more or less the heart of this argument. Limiting government would diminish the power of people to govern themselves? Ah no. Limiting government diminishes the power of others to use the threat of violence in order to intrude upon individuals decisions, but I still see where you're trying to go. We have laws that limit the government in any number of ways Trish, and yet the "people" still retain the ability to amend those limitations if some dire need arises.

You essentially want a small council of people to make decisions for everyone else on any large number of issues, while I'm saying that giving over that type of power only encourages corruption and malfeasance. Look at how many power house lobbyist groups exist, and how they spend money to bribe legislators to pass laws that favor their particular business agenda. That is what happens when you concentrate so much power into one institution. Having a law that says you can't introduce toxins into the water supply or allowing suits for harm to another person or their property, is not the issue here; I have not really seen Ron Paul or any other major libertarian candidate state otherwise. The real issues are items such as the government hand picking what businesses must engage in commerce with particular persons(i.e., must give loans to the "under privileged") or face the possibility of not being allowed to do business at all, what businesses should be given preferential tax treatment (farm subsidies, oil subsidies, etc), and who should be bailed out because they're "too big to fail" or whether we should forgive the 300,000 dollar house loan people take while making 30k a year. These are powers that libertarians think should be beyond the reach of government, and that unless your conduct directly harms others, it should not be the business of the government.

[NYBURBS]

Okay Burbs,

First: While I agree that the "right of association" (which is not in the Constitution by the way) is an innate natural right, the Civil Rights Act isn't about association or even the choice to be an asshole. It's a protection of the public. If you want to make the leap that association equates to whom you do business with, then the choice was already made when that business was opened to the public. You can do private memgership crap, but if you want the market share that "open to the public" pretty much assures, then you have to foliow the same rules as everybody else. You have no "right" to blow off the rules of society if you want to live in it & profit from that association. This is especially true when a business is incorporated, like Woolworth's.

You're right that it's not specifically stated, but it is thought to be inherently implied by the notions of freedom of speech and freedom to assemble/petition. Anyway, to your point on association. I could personally see the logic that barring discrimination based merely on race or ethinicty doesn't offend a right to association, since what is seeking protection is association of political/ideological thought. However, religion is most certainly ideological, and forcing someone to associate on those grounds is wrong. Just as a person should be able to eschew those they see as living a life contrary to their religious beliefs (a freedom that is generally protected), those that wish to eschew people they see as propagating irrational thought, fantasy, and myth, should also be protected in their right to refuse association. If you're going to hold out that in order for someone to feed themselves and their family (i.e., do business) then they must abandon their right to conscious, you might as well scrap the First Amendment.




Lastly: There's no governmental attempt to pick winners & losers. This is a false premise that way too lmany arguments have been based on lately. But it's always something, ain't it? Every time you think you've got some bogus shit debunked, somebody just craps another pile.
Regulation of the financial markets is about promoting competition in all markets. Again, it's a public protection. Lack of regulation allows monopolists to flourish every time. When monopolies take over industry, monopolists are only ones who thrive, & only if they're the ones in control. Well, the parade of politician after politician claiming that the sky would fall if company x,y,z was allowed to fail, seems to contradict your claim. The government, at least as of late, is very much in the business of picking winners and losers.

As for where monopolies come from, I've read some rather persuasive articles claiming that they generally arise due to government protection of certain industries and businesses. Also, that many power players use their money to get legislation passed that relaxes certain regulations until they have taken over the lions share of a new market, and then encourage excessive regulation that makes competition from start ups rather cost prohibitive. The issue for me is not having some baseline set of rules that forbid frauds and schemes, or prevents for instance the poisioning of the environment; rather, it's the government deciding that one market needs to do perform better than some other market, and using the law as a means to further that policy decision.

[trish]

Limiting government diminishes the power of others to use the threat of violence in order to intrude upon individuals decisions...Yes, however not all decisions, but decisions like, “I won’t do business with blacks,” or “We won’t accept Hispanics in our school,” or “I won’t pay a women what I would a man to do this job, because woman just don’t have the ambition to it as well.” Ron and Rand seem to claim the people are overreaching when they enact legislation to empower individuals by limiting the ability of those who would unreasonably obstruct their right to the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness. I disagree. It is not overreaching to protect our shared resources or our right to participate in the shared marketplace whose products depend in part on those resources.

Clearly legislators are susceptible to the bribes of rich and powerful. All the more corrosive are the consequences of greed when unchecked, even in principle, by law and regulations. At least legislators are placed in office by the electorate. If we continue to elect corrupt politicians into office, that’s our fault. We have no sway over the Koch brothers.

Our positions, I would hope, are not so irreconcilable. No liberal claims government is the solution to every problem. No libertarian holds government is never the solution. The problem is agreeing on a balance. There is no philosophically unique and correct answer as to what that balance is. There’s no right answer to the question, “Exactly what is the proper role of government?” Societies evolve toward balances that work for them. Ron, Rand and perhaps you want the right (whether you exercise it or not) to decide not to do business with African/Americans. I want the right to ban firearms from my classroom. We may neither of us get what we desire. That’s called “compromise”: a term conservatives in Washington and elsewhere have forgotten.

[Faldur]

YI want the right to ban firearms from my classroom.

If your classroom is part of a privately held business you have that right. Gun toters are not part of the "federally protected classes".

[hippifried]

Let's get this out of the way first: This really isn't about the 1st Amendment at all. I have no problem with anyone claiming the right of free association, but it's the 9th that applies. Rights are rights (as opposed to priviliges or immunities) because they're inherent.

Public is public. There's no exceptions. If you choose to be public, then the social rules apply. There's no such thing as a nation of hermits. Business owes its existence to the society it works in. Everything that's "open to the public" is part of the commons while open. That goes for churches too. When they put up that welcome sign, there's no "except for...". Once they lock the doors, they're free to all the Satanic orgies they want. They don't have to accept people they don't like as members of the congregation either. In fact, there's a church exemption in the hiring section of the Civil Rights Act. The klan is a private secret terrorist organization, with a lock & armed guards on their clubhouse, so nobody tells them they have to accept black folks, Jews, or Catholics as members. Just like nobody tells the boys who built the treehouse that they can't put up a sign that says "NO GIRLS!". All this whining about infringement of rights is just fanatical bullshit. Following the social rules in public isn't even an inconvenience. Failure to do so can get you banished from the society. Freedom to be an asshole doesn't equate to impunity. That little factoid seems to slip right past most of the egoists who call themselves "libertarian" (a deliberate misnomer IMHO). There's no demand that anyone abandon their principles. Believe any inane bullshit you like. Live your private life any way you like. But there's always been limits on public display. We codify & enforce those limits through our governance because without that, the response (reaction) to assholes is usually violence. The society is made up of people who all have the exact same rights to accept or eschew whatever. Nobody's required to put up with assholes by anyone's philosophical ideology.


Don't confuse "companies" with "industries". Other than AIG (already a monopoly in underwriting private bank to bank lending), all the bailouts were industry wide or given to the States. Picking American over foreign based companies isn't the same as the claim you're making. But then again, all the claims are skewed. TARP was a lie. Paulsen was bailing out Citi. He had to hand it out to the others to keep up appearances. I'm not 100% positive, but I don't believe Geithner ever gave away any of the half of TARP he was allocated. At the time, the vast majority of plastic in the US was running through Citi. That's changed in the last couple of years. Citi's still in trouble, but they won't crash the entire retail market. I hate this shit, but I'm glad they did it. We were well on our way to something really really bad, & all the principled ideology in the world wasn't going to help anything. It never does.

There's all kinds of different things that can & do contribute to the formation of monopolies. But without regulation, you have no prayer of ever getting a handle on it. The very idea that regulation is or ever could be the primary cause of monopoly formation is ludicrous at best. There's a name for monopolist or corporate control of government. It's called fascism. I, for one, don't want the US to be the next to devolve, like Spain under Franco. Ideologue hocus pocus be damned when it becomes a social detriment. There's no philosophy that covers all contingencies. Ideologies don't don't take non-ideologues into account for the most part. That's why they don't work in practice.

[NYBURBS]

Let's get this out of the way first: This really isn't about the 1st Amendment at all. I have no problem with anyone claiming the right of free association, but it's the 9th that applies. Rights are rights (as opposed to priviliges or immunities) because they're inherent.

Public is public. There's no exceptions. If you choose to be public, then the social rules apply. There's no such thing as a nation of hermits. Business owes its existence to the society it works in. Everything that's "open to the public" is part of the commons while open. That goes for churches too. When they put up that welcome sign, there's no "except for...". Once they lock the doors, they're free to all the Satanic orgies they want. They don't have to accept people they don't like as members of the congregation either. In fact, there's a church exemption in the hiring section of the Civil Rights Act. The klan is a private secret terrorist organization, with a lock & armed guards on their clubhouse, so nobody tells them they have to accept black folks, Jews, or Catholics as members. Just like nobody tells the boys who built the treehouse that they can't put up a sign that says "NO GIRLS!". All this whining about infringement of rights is just fanatical bullshit. Following the social rules in public isn't even an inconvenience. Failure to do so can get you banished from the society. Freedom to be an asshole doesn't equate to impunity. That little factoid seems to slip right past most of the egoists who call themselves "libertarian" (a deliberate misnomer IMHO). There's no demand that anyone abandon their principles. Believe any inane bullshit you like. Live your private life any way you like. But there's always been limits on public display. We codify & enforce those limits through our governance because without that, the response (reaction) to assholes is usually violence. The society is made up of people who all have the exact same rights to accept or eschew whatever. Nobody's required to put up with assholes by anyone's philosophical ideology.

Honestly, what kind of backward statement is that? This is most certainly about principles underlying the First Amendment. The 9th Amendment? That people retain unenumerated rights? Yes, rights that go against government encroachment, and most certainly my argument (and Paul's) has been to forbid government involvement into the issue one way or the other. Rather, it's your expressed view that it's proper to involve the government into the issue.

There are religious exceptions to the civil rights law, ones that protect religious groups rights to exclude, but forbids others to exclude them based upon a dislike of their religious beliefs. Religion, political affiliation, social movements, these are all idelogical beliefs that are suppose to be beyond the reach of the government one way or the other.

Change it to a view point of nations. Nation A dislikes the human rights stance of Nation B, so Nation A refuses to engage in commerce with them. Is Nation A wrong? Especially given today's global nature of commerce? Should Nation B be deprived of our service and products simply because we disagree with them? Now take it to a local level. The Church Of Imaginary People has been showing up to military funerals to call the dead a bunch of evil dammed bastards whom the King of Imagination land will burn and torture for all eternity, and this is a sincere and integral part of their religious belief system. So you're a local grocery store owner and want no part of supporting this church, so you refuse to do business with them because of their stated religious views and practices. Are you wrong? Should you be prosecuted by the federal gov't or sued by the Church of Imaginary People? Yes the civil rights act came about because of inexcusable government supported (mandated) segregation; however, what was codified went much further than it should have, and that's what libertarians are pointing out.

[NYBURBS]

Don't confuse "companies" with "industries". Other than AIG (already a monopoly in underwriting private bank to bank lending), all the bailouts were industry wide or given to the States. Picking American over foreign based companies isn't the same as the claim you're making. But then again, all the claims are skewed. TARP was a lie. Paulsen was bailing out Citi. He had to hand it out to the others to keep up appearances. I'm not 100% positive, but I don't believe Geithner ever gave away any of the half of TARP he was allocated. At the time, the vast majority of plastic in the US was running through Citi. That's changed in the last couple of years. Citi's still in trouble, but they won't crash the entire retail market. I hate this shit, but I'm glad they did it. We were well on our way to something really really bad, & all the principled ideology in the world wasn't going to help anything. It never does.


Lehman Bros wasn't bailed out, it was picked as a loser. Also, it's naive to think or say that others wouldn't have risen from the ashes of those giants. Yes it would have hurt, but it's still not for the government to force the public to save particular companies or industries.

[hippifried]

Lehman Bros wasn't bailed out, it was picked as a loser. Also, it's naive to think or say that others wouldn't have risen from the ashes of those giants. Yes it would have hurt, but it's still not for the government to force the public to save particular companies or industries.
Lehman wasn't a bank. They really weren't much of anything but a fiduciary fraud. It was all debt & trick accounting, propping up their own stock. They had no assets. Call it Enron II. They collapsed over a couple of days. They'd tried over & over to sell the company, but all potential buyers begged off as soon as they saw the audits. There was no place to hide. The LIBOR players abandoned them, so they couldn't borrow their way out of trouble. They weren't a member of the Federal Reserve, but Geithner took a look anyway trying to bail them out with a loan. He couldn't justify it at all once he looked at the actual numbers. There was nothing there to bail out. What's naive is thinking that the government had anything to do with the collapse of Lehman one way or the other.

This doesn't make your point at all. They were pretty much unregulated. There wasn't much regulation in the "investment banking" industry anyway. It collapsed & got swallowed up by the big banks. The only two that were able to convince anybody that they were solvent were Goldman Sachs & Morgan Stanley. They petitioned for a change of status to become service (real) banks, & joined the Federal Reserve. They managed to weasel their way into TARP later. The rest, like Meryl Lynch went down the tubes, along with the mortgage brokers. How was any of this caused by regulation?

Like I already said: The only TARP bank that was really in trouble was Citi Group. Yeah, I guess they could have gone through some kind of standard bankrupsy if there was anything in the bankrupsy statutes that covered it. The main concern was winding them down smoothly while everybody's credit cards got spread around through the banking system. TARP didn't bail out the banks. It broke up the credit card & bullshit investment insurance monopolies. The "market" caused all this, & wasn't going to fix it. Without the interference, things would have gotten more consolidated. Monopolies are anathema to a free market. Wishful thinking won't change reality.

[hippifried]

The Civil Rights Act isn't a Constitutional Amendment. It's a piece of legislation that tries to cover all contingencies. Impossible to do, but that's the nature of codified law. Perfect is a pipe dream. Utopian anarchy would be wonderful, but it can't work because humanity gets in the way. The same way it gets in the way of all purist ideologies.

To deal with imperfection, we base our societies around the universal moral code. We're all expected to behave in public. The universal code of human interaction is just one rule. The ethic of reciprocity, AKA "the golden rule". The code is what allows us to live in close proximity to each other. Otherwise there's no society, mankind can't group together, & we don't survive as a species. That's the social rule that governs our dealings with each other in the commons. In private you can do what you like, but we're not talking about "in private" here. Everybody has the same rights. We like to mention the poetic ones that are listed in the founding documents, but the number one human right is the right to be free from victimization at the hands of others. That's the violation of the code, & is recognized in all cultures & societies, by every person as soon as it happens. So while everybody's talking a bunch of hypothetical bullshit about some mythical right to be an asshole, there really isn't one because there's no right to violate the code.