Re: POLITICS Discrimination and Property Rights

[Guest guest]

On 12/29/07, Ancient Eyeball Recipe <implode7@...> wrote:

> huh? I wasn¹t talking about the bat. You¹re saying that, for instance, a home

> is only yours to the extent that you can ³choose how to dispose of it². I¹m

> pointing out the absurdity that apparently, then, how one actually uses it

> before one disposes of it is seemingly irrelevant.

I'm sorry I misunderstood you. Yes, of course how you use it before

and as you sell it is all part of the equation.

> It would seem to me that choosing whom to sell it to is only the primary

criterion

> of the Œdegree of ownership¹ in a rather warped view ­ for reasons I¹ve

already

> stated, and because, once you dispose of it, it¹s obviously no longer yours.

I may have picked a poor word, but I didn't mean " dispose " merely as

getting rid of something, but I meant what use you put it to. I

should have said having control over what you do with it.

> >> > I should say here that I think one of the weaknesses of the

> >> > libertarian argument from an ethical standpoint is that there does not

> >> > seem to be any ultimate moral authority on which the right to person

> >> > and property is based. Your argument has the same weakness, it would

> >> > seem, because you are arbitrarily declaring this right and then

> >> > calling it " inherent. "

> Oh, give me a break, Chris. All ethical arguments ultimately come down issues

> like this ­ you want to call these presuppositions Œarbitrary¹ - perhaps

> you actually operate that way. I find it interesting that on the one hand you

> spout some pretty fundamentalist Christian rhetoric at times, and then on

> the other hand you imply that the rights of people to discriminate (in the bad

> sense) should be prioritized over the rights of people to be treated

> fairly and without discrimination, and that my argument otherwise is

Œarbitrary¹.

> In a sense that¹s correct ­ we are CHOOSING ­ and that¹s how we are judged

> ethically.

I don't think I qualify as a " fundamentalist Christian " in the

standard sense of the phrase.

In any case, is there not a difference between how we judge someone

ethically, and what we enshrine into law?

And the question was not where do I place the right of people to not

be discriminated against with respect to the right to discriminate --

the question was, is someone who defends private property rights in a

libertarian fashion a bigot.

> Are you really spouting this gibberish? Of course, Œcontrol over one¹s own

> person¹ is fundamental... Many things ³flow² from this, but as you stated

> in the case of violence, when these start conflicting with other FUNDAMENTAL

> rights is when we start placing limits on them. One big problem is when

> you use warped reasoning like yours above to conclude that it¹s ok to deprive

> others of rights, because of this logic, a logic which would certainly

> legitimize rampant discrimination in some communities, as existed in a

> much grander scale in this country before federal legislation was passed.

In the case of violence, it does not interfere with other fundamental

rights; the person's action interferes with the right of another

person to his or herself. The right to one's own person does not mean

the right to do whatever one wants, but to have control over one's own

body. This does not even extend to actions that interact with the

natural surroundings of a person until property is involved in the

equation. And at that point, the question immediately arises of

whether the property can be homesteaded or not, or whether it is

someone elses, and if so, if it is being used legitimately. And in

the case of, say, beating someone over the head, no, that person's

head obviously can't be homesteaded as it belongs to that person.

There are no conflicting rights; there is one action of one person

violating the right of the other to the safety and exclusive control

of her or his own body.

I'm less concerned with whether there was rampant discrimination and

more concerned with whether there was rampant diminution of the

quality of life for classes of people, and whether this was

meaningfully mitigated by federal legislation.

I think that racial discrimination is utterly pathogenic and quite

obviously anti-Christian, and reflects some type of thoroughly diseasd

Christianity insofar as the people practicing it actually claim to be

Christians -- obviously, falsely, if they judge people by race -- but

this is not the point, really. This type of a thing requires an

inward transformation that goes beyond mere outward behavior, and I

don't think you can legislate it out of people or out of a culture.

So the question is, did federal legislation and court decisions

forcing integration cause important mitigation of circumstances that

were causing misery or some other condition that would justify

interfering with these people's freedom to be part of a defective

culture?

That seems like a question that has to be answered empiraclly. I

haven't studied it, but I have seen some lectures by African American

scholars indicating that these things did more harm than good. This,

to me, is more important than the abstract principle of property

rights. Of course, maybe these people can be aptly refuted. But I

doubt anyone who takes them to be " disgusting " is going to take the

time to make a meningful refutation.

> Yes. But I think that we can differentiate between programs that are

> established to bring equality to those who have been historically denied it,

> and those that are established to deny equality to those who have been

> historically denied it. Again ­ it comes down to a more ŒChristian¹ view

> of the world vs one that is based on acquisition and greed in the guise of

> Œfreedom¹.

So what is the Christian political philosophy outlined in the new

testament, aside from " honor the emperor " and " pay taxes to whom taxes

are due, " and so on? There seems to be a complete absence of dictums

for what the government should actually do.

> >> >Should not a religious institution have the right

> >> > to establish a nursing home that is only open to adherents of that

> >> > religion?

> > At some point, these have to be looked at on a case by case basis. I don¹t

> > think that this discussion should devolve to an argument about every such

> > subtle case. I¹m not sure about this one ­ I¹d have to think about it.

> > Surely, if it were the only nursing home in the area, I¹d say that maybe

> they

> > should be open to everyone. On the other hand, I think that our society

> should

> > provide free medical care, and care for the elderly...

So do I, and that is the Christian point of view. I just think we

would have a serious disagreement on exactly how it should be

implemented.

> >> > Should not a school have the right to require its

> >> > professorships or even its students to be filled by people adhereing

> >> > to a specific religion or set of religions?

> > Again ­ an interesting discussion in its own right, but surely even you

> can

> > differentiate between racist discrimination, and discrimination of this

> kind.

Sure, but, how valuable is it to force, say, the KKK to accept black

students at a school they are running? Or, for the New Black Panther

Party for Self Defense to admit white students into some school they

are running?

Aside from that, I was deliberately using more complicated and harder

examples to make a point about why a simple ban on racial, religious,

sexual, etc, discrimination is problematic.

> >> > Should not a private

> >> > institution have the right to institute an affirmative action program,

> >> > if it feels that racial diversity is important to its operation?

> >> >

> >> > If there is no right to discriminate on race, how could there possibly

> >> > be affirmative action, which you recently said you support?

> > ­ you¹re freely changing the meanings of words to bolster your

> > Œargument¹ that there is absurdity here. I don¹t know exactly what my

> words

> > were, but certainly, in the sense that you are using it here, I didn¹t and

> > never would have stated that there is ³no right to discriminate on race².

> > There is a difference in the way that discriminate is used when we say

> that

> > someone is Œguilty¹ of discrimination against a group, and the very basic

> > sense of the word in which we are just choosing between options based on

> > various criteria.

> > I see no problem here.

So a white person who is more qualified than a black person but gets

rejected because of an affirmative action quota is not in some sense

racially discriminated against? Didn't they lose a position they

" deserved " because of their race?

> > You cannot differentiate between hanging a swastika on the inside of your

> > home, for instance, and say, erecting a huge lighted one on your front

> lawn?

Sure -- at that point you are intruding your views essentially on to

others' property, and it becomes more complicated. Someone who wants

to *buy* the property isn't having their property violated, because

they don't yet have any.

[snip]

> > Of course, when you try to legislate stuff like this, you run into

> difficult

> > issues about where to draw the line between property rights, free speech,

> and

> > the rights of others. That does not mean that we cannot differentiate

> between

> > cases, and try to work out the best laws based on our prioritization of

> basic

> > ethical principles that can at times seemingly conflict with one another.

That is a legitimate point.

[snip]

> As I explained - Œracist¹ is a term that we apply to others based on certain

> criteria. I think that often, people whom we describe as racist don¹t

> actually form racist thought explicitly...I am comfortable with describing

> the defense of the right of a community or a person to discriminate against

> people because of their race, gender, sexual preference, relgion, etc, as a

> bigoted position because it is acknowledged that these bigoted actions will

> occur, that people will be adversely affected, and that it is permissible

> because property rights are more important. But, certainly, this is

> Œbigoted¹ in a very weak sense, and I don¹t feel very strongly about the

> label itself in this case.

Well, ok, but had originally used the term, and I don't think he

would use it in this way, so, while I can't dispute that a libertarian

would be a " bigot " in this sense, I think my position with respect to

's was reasonable to point out the basis of this in private

property theory rather than racism.

Chris