However, the contents of this particular column bring nothing new to the one-sided mainstream media mugfest. It puts me in mind of all the complaints we’ve heard recently from Washington politicians about an Arizona law that it turns out none of them have actually read.

A better approach might be to research how someone could have arrived at what initially appears to be an outrageous position (a good example: “more guns equals less crime”), and often in the process you will learn something new and valuable.

Rand Paul, like his father Ron Paul, is a libertarian by philosophy. Libertarians believe that all people have the right to do as they wish with their lives and property, provided they don’t physically harm or threaten others, or damage or destroy their property. We believe that everyone has the right to freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of association and the peaceful use of their property. (You might think those values are self-evident and hard to argue against, yet otherwise good people violate them a dozen times a day without even noticing it.)

Defending these freedoms wherever they are threatened is an obligation for those who love liberty. HOWEVER, sometimes this involves defending the rights of people whose beliefs and lifestyles we find reprehensible. You can’t avoid it.

So, yes, in a free society, all owners of private property deserve the ability to manage their property in any peaceful way they want. And yes, that includes even racist business owners, who should have the freedom to discriminate in such matters as who they choose to serve and even who they choose to hire.

That doesn’t mean, however, that libertarians APPROVE of such discrimination—any more than our defense of a racist’s right to publish a newsletter means that we endorse the IDEAS in that newspaper. Nor does it mean that the libertarian position would leave our society helpless in the face of racism and segregation, or that such things would flourish in a libertarian world.

How many of you recall when the National Socialist Party of America (that is, the “Nazi’ wing of “socialist”) planned a confrontational march through the Jewish suburb of Skokie, Illinois? Reprehensible, right? And yet their RIGHT to do so was defended by no less than the American Civil Liberties Union, and was ultimately upheld by federal courts—even though neither of them approved of the content of the message being delivered! (And after all that, the march was a major non-event, exactly as it should have been all along—another example that liberty can work, when we let it.)

This is how a TRULY free society operates. If you concede this principle as it applies to the rights to speech and assembly, you must also concede it as it applies to the right of association.

For sure, I suspect the largely liberal ACLU would be concerned to learn that (according to Jim) their defense of this principle of liberty was linked to some sort of “crazy, conservative bias,” or a political jihad against “socialism.” Furthermore, it’s obvious that the people who are “having the hell scared out of them” by the particular “idea of freedom” floated by Rand Paul are not conservatives.

It’s a mistake to try to categorize these rights as somehow being the native turf of the left or right. What they are instead are choices that we chose to reserve to free people instead of to an authoritarian government of either the left OR the right.

Let me make one irony very plain: the waitress at that Flagstaff cafe wasn’t necessarily expressing her personal opinion, or even that of her boss—she was as much a victim of ARIZONA LAW of the time as the hungry men she was turning away. Such travesties were only possible because government itself violated freedom of association by establishing and enforcing racial discrimination laws in the first place. Jim Crow statutes of the early 20th century would never have arisen in a society that truly honored our individual freedoms. It was only the ability of powerful “special interests” to abuse and co-opt the force of government to create unconstitutional law REQUIRING racist behavior by everybody else that gave this nightmare the staying power that kept it an issue for decades.

Libertarians encourage solutions to social problems that are voluntary, not force-based. That’s why we reject the notion that a government law restricting a merchant’s freedom in one direction was the best and only possible cure for the abuses committed by another government law that restricted a merchant’s freedom in the opposite direction. We believe instead that moral and effective solutions to such problems almost always involve letting people exercise their own liberty to make their own choices, without government forcing the issue one way or the other, as long as none of those choices physically harm or threaten other people.

Not only would true respect for liberty have prevented these evils from taking place, but our free speech, freedom of assembly, and property rights continue to provide the good people in our society the tools they need to combat them. We can attempt to persuade a business owner (that is, once he no longer has a government-endorsed Jim Crow law to fall back on!) not to discriminate; we can inform his customers or his practices; we can publish and circulate exposés; we can refuse to do business with him; we can tell him, his customers, and his suppliers that we will not patronize them as long as the discrimination continues. In extreme, we can even picket him.

In America today, with or without a Civil Rights Act, businesses that discriminated against blacks or other minorities would face an avalanche of disapproval and ostracism. Few businesses—certainly none of any significant size—would be able to stand up to that.

Those few businesses that might nevertheless persist would stand as monuments to our society’s deep commitment to liberty even for viewpoints we find reprehensible. Ironically, this serves the cause of liberty.

To be sure, libertarians strongly applaud those portions of the Civil Rights Act that forbid the GOVERNMENT from discriminating against their “customers” or employees on the basis of race and color. Discrimination has no place in a public institution: government is compelled to serve us all equally under the law, and therefore possesses no right of free association.

However, in the realm of private society and private commerce, Libertarians believe that the vast majority of Americans will choose to do the right thing; and that even if some small number choose otherwise, a person who is not free to make mistakes is not free. Americans will peacefully reject and defeat racism and segregation IF the tools of freedom—property rights, free speech, and freedom of assembly—are vigorously protected for all; not just for those who share our personal opinions.

C. D. Tavares
Libertarian Precinct Committeeman
Morristown Precinct

I’m not happy about what’s happening in America. It’s only by speaking out against what we believe is wrong — such as civil rights violations — that we can prevent America from sliding down the slippery slope to fascism or something worse.

I must say that I am a bit disappointed to see this sort of content on this blog. No doubt some fellow travelers here will view this as small-minded, but I kind of enjoyed having this particular corner of cyberspace dedicated to the goings-on around Wickenburg. I enjoy the history, the pictures, and, yes, the tall tales of the area. This is not to say that I keep my head in the sand by any means. It was just a bit of a shock to see this sort of content here, and I would hate to see this blog become a stopping point for the kind of people that tend to haunt places that discuss the nation’s political scene.

After a while, progress tends to be in the eye of the beholder. As someone who is old enough to remember a time when one could discuss the weather, automobiles, or personal health without running headlong into politics, I’d have to say I kind of miss that aspect of the not-too-distant past. Maybe that makes me an old crank. It might even make me a knuckle-dragger itching to roll us all back to 1847 in some folks’ eyes. I really don’t care what it makes me. I also know I am free to head elsewhere, before that point comes up. It just seems a shame, that’s all.