Cedar Park Dad wrote:
The government's job is to provide for a common defense and a legal system to protect, on the most basic level, property rights. It's not the government's job to ensure equality or force people not to discriminate.
You might want to look at the post ACW Amendments again. At least some forms of discrimination are indeed the government's job to protect against, and rightly so.
The difficulty with the free contract argument (which on the whole I agree with) are geographic or product monopolies. If availability of product/service is limited in the area or by type, then thats a problem. Urban environments, less of an issue. Rural environments however and you still have many of the old problems. If the grocery in Giddings won't see to you and you live there, you've got much more of a problem than if an HEB in Houston metro won't.
I think this argument of non-availability has pretty much lost its relevancy. I live out in the country and there are lots of things that are unavailable to me, from certain kinds of social contact to pizza delivery. For instance, I'd like to board my dogs for the day at a nice doggy day care like Petsmart has, but if I want to do that I have to go to an urban area, like Houston. Many products I'd like to purchase aren't available within any reasonable distance and some would be hard to find even in a large urban area. I have to drive over 20 miles to get to any grocery store, and there is only one that close.
Sure, you can live some place where the choices are more abundant, but while the implication that without government intervention you couldn't by groceries under some circumstances may be a valid theoretical concept, I don't think it has much validity in reality. If you're poor, you're choices are limited by being poor, no matter what your race, ethnic background, or sexual preference may be. I'd argue that government intervention has eroded the old social contract and made it more difficult for poor people to get community assistance. Since the government is taking care of it many people feel like they don't need to be involved.
Anyway, how on earth would a grocery store know if I was a homosexual? The only kind of practical discrimination a grocery store can practice is based on looks, or in a narrow way, law (they can keep us law-abiding CHLs out with a valid 30.06 sign). But let's say the local grocery store was owned by a La Raza radical and excluded Anglos. I still have other options. For instance, I could pay some enterprising young Hispanic teen to buy my groceries for me. Or, I could by my groceries from Amazon, or maybe I just have a nice neighbor willing to help.
In any case, anyone who lives in an area where choices important to them are unavailable can choose to move. This is what people in far less affluent and far more bigoted times did. Homosexuals, for example, located to large urban areas. Anyone who chooses to live in a rural area is making a choice to give something up in return for something else --usually something more concrete for something more abstract. It's difficult on one level to generalize, because options tend to vary with wealth, but the people suing bakers for not baking them a fancy wedding cake aren't poor people.
But as to post ACW amendments. Let's not forget the distinction that the Constitution is intended to limit government, not private conduct. The government absolutely should be prohibited from discrimination. Post ACW though, it hasn't done all that great of a job until more recent times, which could be argued is more the product of social evolution than any government action. Democrat Woodrow Wilson may have set African American civil rights back by decades:
"‘Upon taking power in Washington, Wilson and the many other Southerners he brought into his cabinet were disturbed at the way the federal government went about its own business. One legacy of post-Civil War Republican ascendancy was that Washington's large black populace had access to federal jobs, and worked with whites in largely integrated circumstances. Wilson's cabinet put an end to that, bringing Jim Crow to Washington.
“‘Wilson allowed various officials to segregate the toilets, cafeterias, and work areas of their departments. One justification involved health: White government workers had to be protected from contagious diseases, especially venereal diseases, that racists imagined were being spread by blacks. In extreme cases, federal officials built separate structures to house black workers. Most black diplomats were replaced by whites; numerous black federal officials in the South were removed from their posts; the local Washington police force and fire department stopped hiring blacks. Wilson's own view, as he expressed it to intimates, was that federal segregation was an act of kindness.
http://www.tedhayes.us/art_woodrow_wils ... ution.html
The US government presided over the Tuskegee experiment, unethical medical experiment on Black people, from 1932 to 1972. The government has lagged rather than led social progress, and their intervention usually makes things worse and enlarges government power at the expense of individual liberty. Back when there were still Republican Senators that represented Constitutional values, Barry Goldwater said this about the civil rights act and he was right:
I realize fully that the Federal Government has a responsibility in the field of civil rights. I supported the civil rights bills which were enacted in 1957 and 1960, and my public utterances during the debates on those measures and since reveal clearly the areas in which I feel Federal responsibility lies and Federal legislation on this subject can be both effective and appropriate. Many of those areas are encompassed in this bill and to that extent, I favor it.
I wish to make myself perfectly clear. The two portion so this bill to which I have constantly and consistently voiced objections, and which are of such overriding significance that they are determinative of my vote on the entire measure, are thoe which would embark the Federal Government on a regulatory course of action in the area of so-called "public accommodations" and in the area of employment--to be precise, Titles II and VII of the bill. I find no constitutional basis for the exercise of Federal regulatory authority in either of these areas; and I believe the attempted usurpation of such power to be a grave threat to the very essence of our basic system of government, namely, that of a constitutional government in which 50 sovereign states have reserved to themselves and to the people those powers not specifically granted to the central or Federal Government.
If it is the wish of the American people that the Federal Government should be granted the power to regulate in this two areas and in the manner contemplated by tho bill, then I say the Constitution should be so amended as to authorize such action in accordance with the procedures for amending the Constitution which that great document itself prescribes. I say further that for this great legislative body to ignore the Constitution and the fundamental concepts of our governmental system is to act in a manner which could ultimately destroy the freedom of all American citizens, including the freedoms of the very persons whose feelings and whose liberties are the major subject of this legislation.
My basic objection to this measure is, therefore, constitutional, but in addition I would like to point out to my colleagues in the Senate and to the people of America, regardless of their race, color or creed, the implications involved in the enforcement of regulatory legislation of this sort. To give genuine effect to the prohibitions of tho bill will require the creation of a Federal police force of mammoth proportions. It also bids fair to result in the development of an "informer" psychology in great areas of our national life--neighbors spying on neighbors, workers spying on workers, businessmen spying on businessen, where those who would dharass their fellow citizens for selfish and narrow purposes will have ample inducement to do so. These, the Federal police force and an "informer" psychology, are the hallmarks of the police state and landmarks in the destruction of a free society.
I repeat again: I am unalterably opposed to discrimination of any sort and I believe that though the problem is fundamentally one of the heart, some law can help--but not law that embodies features like these, provisions which fly in the face of the Constitution and which require for their effective execution the creation of a police state. And so, because I am unalterably opposed to any threats to our great system of government and the loss of our God-given liberties, I shall vote "No" on this bill.
This vote will be reluctantly cast, because I had hoped to be able to vote "Yea" on this measure as I have on the civil right bills which have preceded it; but I cannot in good conscience to the oath that I took when assuming office, cast my vote in the affirmative. With the exception of Titles II and VII, I could wholeheartedly support this bill; but with their inclusion, not measurably improved by the compromise version we have been working on, my vote must by "No".
If my vote is misconstrued, let it be, and let me suffer its consequences. Just let me be judged in this by the real concern I have voiced here and not by words that others may speak or by what others may say about what I thick.
My concern extends beyond this single legislative moment. My concern extends beyond any single group in our society. My concern is for the entire Nation, for the freedom of all who live in it and for all who will be born into it.
It is the general welfare that must be considered now, not just the special appeals for special welfare. This is the time to attend to the liberties of all.
This is my concern. And this is where I stand.
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2014/06/b ... creat.html
