>> ^longde:

Even in 2011 you can walk into a restaurant or public establishment and not get served due to race.
With the number of racist kooks that have come out of the woodwork since Obama's election, it's not hard to believe that given the opportunity, a segregationist belt could emerge in this country again.
I think many libertarians don't care about that because, since it is a white majority country and most libertarians are white, they won't have to live with the negative consequences of a libertarian policy that removed anti-segregationist regulation. >> ^blankfist:
>> ^longde:
I liked those ideas, but I still don't think I would be confortable living in his ideal america. I'd be sitting in the back of greyhound, and using separate bathrooms at Walmart.

That's ridiculous. No way. Segregation would never happen again. Never. Even if you repealed every law in the land.



I'm talking about segregation in terms of public services and places, not refusal of private services. Think more Rosa Parks and the segregated school systems from the 50s and 60s. I think the majority of people believe that segregation is bad, so you won't see it among most private companies.

So, it is hard to believe that a "segregationist belt" would emerge if given the opportunity. And it's a copout to say that the majority of people in any party are white, because the US population is so. Means nothing and it's a straw man argument. I could say that the majority of Democrats are white, but that's just statistical numbers.

Also, just because you're white doesn't make you a racist.

>> ^blankfist
:

@NetRunner, so what human rights are these? Riding on a privately owned bus is a human right now? If she can't get a ride from a racist white man's bus company then she loses her human dignity? This is a bit of a stretch.

Actually, it's the law. From the Civil Rights Act of 1964:

TITLE II--INJUNCTIVE RELIEF AGAINST DISCRIMINATION IN PLACES OF PUBLIC ACCOMMODATION
SEC. 201. (a) All persons shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, and privileges, advantages, and accommodations of any place of public accommodation, as defined in this section, without discrimination or segregation on the ground of race, color, religion, or national origin.

You can read the rest yourself for the exhaustive description of a "public accommodation", but the short summary is that it includes any privately owned public space for engaging in commerce, including buses, lunch counters, hotels, restaurants, etc.
>> ^blankfist
:

Let's bring it back to what really happened in the real world that you and me live in. Rosa Parks' rights were violated by the government. She was forced to pay for the same public transit system which in return treated her unfairly.
The racist, private bus owner is a straw man.


The way you phrase this, it's like you think "the government" was some foreign entity imposing racial discrimination on the South without one lick of support amongst the population. The real story is that after 1964 you had government imposing integration on an unwilling (white) population, and there seem to be at least a few who're still mad about it.

Do you really think there was no one in the South in the 1960's who owned private businesses who refused to serve people on the basis of their skin color?

Since you're hung up on the public/private thing, how about Woolworth's lunch counters? Totally private, totally discriminatory.

Whose rights got violated there, and by who? The Woolworth's owner by the people who wouldn't leave when asked?

@NetRunner, so what human rights are these? Riding on a privately owned bus is a human right now? If she can't get a ride from a racist white man's bus company then she loses her human dignity? This is a bit of a stretch.

Let's bring it back to what really happened in the real world that you and me live in. Rosa Parks' rights were violated by the government. She was forced to pay for the same public transit system which in return treated her unfairly.

The racist, private bus owner is a straw man.

>> ^blankfist
:

@NetRunner, it's a big difference. One is a representational government forcing people to pay for their salaries and services and then treating them unfairly and unequally. The other would be a private jackass who thinks it's a great business decision to not do business with black people.


But again, you're saying there's no inherent right for Rosa Parks to get treated like a human being. You're saying that maybe she gets a guaranteed right if she pays her taxes, and if she's lucky, every institution she deals with through her life is somehow publicly funded so she can get some basic human dignity...but you're opposed to the existence of any taxes, and any tax subsidy.

Shouldn't someone like Rosa Parks feel like you're trying to take away her right to her fundamental rights as a human being?

@blankfist so again, that's the only thing at issue? If the bus had merely been privately owned, asking Rosa Parks to sit in the back of the bus wouldn't have been a violation of her rights? And her refusing to move would've been her violating the bus owner's rights?

So for you, the upshot of the story of Rosa Parks was...what? Bus owners have the right to tell her where to sit for any reason, and if she doesn't like it, she can walk? That the true injustice of that event was that history looks on her as a hero for her successful assault on the rights of business owners everywhere?

>> ^blankfist
:

A right to apply? Look, I don't have a problem with Asians applying to any college. I'm not sure that's an infringement of their rights, but it surely shouldn't be a right if the college is 100% private.
Rights, to me, are a bit more than saying someone has a right to apply to any school they damn well please to apply for. If it's public then that's one thing, but if they're private and not enjoying government subsidies then they should have the right to only accept submissions from french fries if that's what they so choose.
Gaining access to private schools isn't a right any more than me gaining access to your home.

>> ^Morganth:

This was supposed to be a fund-raiser. Then someone jumps him with an unexpected question and everyone whips out their camera phones to put this on the internet. If you think Obama is being short and blunt, it's because he is and it's intentional. His every word will be scrutinized by CNN, FOX, MSNBC and plenty of foreign news agencies.
Imagine being invited to a party and while you're there someone pulls out a camera to ask you your position on controversial issue x. You have no prep time and what you say can't be taken back because it's going to be available for the world to see within minutes.
As for Manning, he's not being held indefinitely and he's not in some secret holding cell. He's in Kansas. And his pre-trail hearing is in May. For those of you who think he's some sort of reincarnated Rosa Parks, here are his own words, "If you had unprecedented access to classified networks 14 hours a day 7 days a week for 8+ months, what would you do?" or how about, "listened and lip-synced to Lady Gaga’s Telephone while exfiltratrating possibly the largest data spillage in american history...i could’ve sold to russia or china, and made bank?"
He did it simply because he was bored, he could, and he hated his crappy job with the Army sitting in front of a computer all day in the middle of a freaking desert. He ended up getting caught because he bragged about it wanting hacker fame.
Assange hasn't broken any US law. Manning's lucky that the prosecution isn't seeking the death penalty, which 'Aiding the Enemy' (one of the 23 charges against him) carries.


Well...he was a constitutional law professor. You'd think he'd know a little something about the presumption of innocence.

He is the president its a pritty simple question you dont need prep time thats the whole issue with polatics is that polatitoins can just say smarmy bullshit and get away with it. noone has a clue as to what or who abama is or what he realy wants to do .

>> ^Morganth:

This was supposed to be a fund-raiser. Then someone jumps him with an unexpected question and everyone whips out their camera phones to put this on the internet. If you think Obama is being short and blunt, it's because he is and it's intentional. His every word will be scrutinized by CNN, FOX, MSNBC and plenty of foreign news agencies.
Imagine being invited to a party and while you're there someone pulls out a camera to ask you your position on controversial issue x. You have no prep time and what you say can't be taken back because it's going to be available for the world to see within minutes.
As for Manning, he's not being held indefinitely and he's not in some secret holding cell. He's in Kansas. And his pre-trail hearing is in May. For those of you who think he's some sort of reincarnated Rosa Parks, here are his own words, "If you had unprecedented access to classified networks 14 hours a day 7 days a week for 8+ months, what would you do?" or how about, "listened and lip-synced to Lady Gaga’s Telephone while exfiltratrating possibly the largest data spillage in american history...i could’ve sold to russia or china, and made bank?"
He did it simply because he was bored, he could, and he hated his crappy job with the Army sitting in front of a computer all day in the middle of a freaking desert. He ended up getting caught because he bragged about it wanting hacker fame.
Assange hasn't broken any US law. Manning's lucky that the prosecution isn't seeking the death penalty, which 'Aiding the Enemy' (one of the 23 charges against him) carries.

This was supposed to be a fund-raiser. Then someone jumps him with an unexpected question and everyone whips out their camera phones to put this on the internet. If you think Obama is being short and blunt, it's because he is and it's intentional. His every word will be scrutinized by CNN, FOX, MSNBC and plenty of foreign news agencies.

Imagine being invited to a party and while you're there someone pulls out a camera to ask you your position on controversial issue x. You have no prep time and what you say can't be taken back because it's going to be available for the world to see within minutes.

As for Manning, he's not being held indefinitely and he's not in some secret holding cell. He's in Kansas. And his pre-trail hearing is in May. For those of you who think he's some sort of reincarnated Rosa Parks, here are his own words, "If you had unprecedented access to classified networks 14 hours a day 7 days a week for 8+ months, what would you do?" or how about, "listened and lip-synced to Lady Gaga’s Telephone while exfiltratrating possibly the largest data spillage in american history...i could’ve sold to russia or china, and made bank?"

He did it simply because he was bored, he could, and he hated his crappy job with the Army sitting in front of a computer all day in the middle of a freaking desert. He ended up getting caught because he bragged about it wanting hacker fame.

Assange hasn't broken any US law. Manning's lucky that the prosecution isn't seeking the death penalty, which 'Aiding the Enemy' (one of the 23 charges against him) carries.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'daily show, fox news, rosa parks, civil rights, jon stewart' to 'tds, daily show, fox news, rosa parks, civil rights, jon stewart, obama, GOP, back seat' - edited by calvados

@blankfist, you're not responding to the points I made.

In the first quoted section, I'm not making the "it's the law, so it's right" argument, I'm saying "we already have a formal, legal definition of the difference that makes sense to me and most people, what's the reason for changing it?" I further went on to provide examples where the same behavior get treated very differently today, and you decline to answer whether you think the law should be somehow normalized in that example.

In the second quoted section, again you don't actually make an argument for me being wrong in any way, nor respond to my example, you just declare that I am suffering from a "Democratic fallacy" (I don't think that word means what you think it means), and then go on to both make a straw man ("[You] want to meddle in all aspects of human life"), and a fallacious argument against it (i.e. your viewpoint is simpler, so it should be right).

In the third, I'm not making an argument about the historical facts surrounding Rosa Parks, I'm making the argument that if this is a moral argument, and that morality dictates that private discrimination is okay, while public discrimination is not, then Libertarian Rosa Parks needed to check and see who owns the bus (the City, or a private company) before she refuses to go to the back of the bus, because otherwise she's making a fuss about something she has no moral right to refuse to comply to, just the right to find another bus if she doesn't like it.

In fact, you are saying that to defend freedom, we should be willing to give our lives to defend the right of the bus owner to make black people get to the back of the bus, even if we think it's wrong (but that we shouldn't think it's wrong, because morally, property rights are all that matter).

>> ^blankfist:

@NetRunner, but why are you making a distinction in ownership between residential and commercial property? Why can't it just be property that's owned and therefore simply private?

That was basically my question to you. I gave an example where the implicit social expectations, and legal expectations were completely different, despite both being privately owned.

What is the basis for your argument that they should be considered the same? Do you think those social and legal conventions should change to reflect that sameness?
>> ^blankfist:
When you buy a good, it becomes your property and you own it. If you purchase groceries, do you believe you have sole ownership of it? Or should that also be considered privately owned public food and therefore not really owned by you? See? It's doublespeak.

I gave an example where the line between public and private is blurry, you gave one where it is less so. I said a couple posts back that I believe there's a spectrum of ownership. Some objects, when owned, are clearly close to the libertarian ideal in terms of the benefits of ownership.

But let's go with specific object ownership for a second. Let's say you buy a cucumber, and I come up and stab it with a needle, should the penalty be the same as if I'd done the same thing to your arm? I mean, in both cases I'm damaging your property, but the cucumber will never heal, whereas your arm will, probably very quickly.

In either case, the monetary value of the damages done are trivial.

Should the police treat assaults on property the same as assault on people's bodies? If so, why? If not, why not?
>> ^blankfist:
That isn't aggression. And it certainly isn't constraining freedom. If the local grocery store doesn't want me as a customer, then I have the choice to go elsewhere.

Then the cartoons are totally valid portrayals of the fucked up things libertarians believe. So Rosa Parks should have made sure to check if it was a private or public bus before getting mad about being asked to move to the back of it?

I mean, that's the argument you're making here. On a Metro bus, discrimination is morally wrong (why?), but on a Greyhound bus, discrimination is the business owner's moral right, and should be enforced by the police if uppity negroes get it into their heads that they're people too.

This is the basic problem -- libertarians don't believe that "Civil Rights" are or should be rights.
>> ^blankfist:
He has limited my options, but so do places I cannot afford to eat at. Or what about private airports? Shit, why can't I walk on the tarmac of the Santa Monica Airport?! That's constraining my freedom, right?! Sigh.

Well, the Civil Rights Act doesn't forbid you "discriminating" for those reasons. You can still make service conditional on payment (or not), and you can still mark off "Employees only" sections of privately-owned public areas. Signs that say "No shirt, no shoes, no service" are okay. So is kicking someone out for being a jerk to you, or even for taking too long to order, Soup Nazi style.

It's about taking away your "freedom" to put a blanket ban on people on the basis of race, group, or class, and giving people who've been subjected to that kind of discrimination legal means of recourse.

It's weird how many white people will intellectualize this issue, and discuss it as an abstract.

It's just racism. That is all that it is.

It was very clearly racism when on Morning Joe, none of the panel could keep their eyes off of Harold Ford.

Rand Paul is a racist, and so is his father. So was William Buckley, the "Grandfather" of the conservative movement. It's not difficult to discover. Lew Rockwell has all the old Ron Paul papers. They're ugly. Most of them are also homophobic, as well as misogynistic. All are clearly classist.

They are all quite hypocritical as well.

For instance, while Rand Paul claims he's a libertarian (when it suits him), he also believes in the drug war and the death penalty. He thinks that abortion is not a states issue. He also believes in subsidizing the coal industry, and %50 of his patients are Medicare recipients and is against any cuts in Medicare funding. So, basically he's just a wingnut racist Republican liar.

His father, the "World's Most Famous Libertarian" lobbied for $96.1million in Federal earmarks last year. But he doesn't want to spend a dime on giving Rosa Parks a medal? Yeah, that's not racism at all, it's just coincidental.

In defense of the abhorrent. Keep dancing, Rand.

......

What spurious arguments.

Racial discrimination ended in Boston (and the north) in the 1800s? Not at all. Blacks were getting their heads busted in Boston in the 60s as well.

So, if this guy had his way, Woolworths would be free to not serve blacks at lunch counters; Rosa Parks should go to the back of the bus (run by a private company).

This is where libertarianism hits a brick wall.

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:

Perhaps I am naive, but the trollish observations of "race-baiting and victimology" do have some significance. Racism still happens, and when it does it needs to be righted, but this constant heehawing about supposed acts of racism seems to just prolong the healing.


So if black people just shut up and stop 'heehawing' about racism, everything will get better? It seems to me that a lot of good has come as a result of heehawing by the likes of MLK, Ghandi, Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, Langston Hughes etc. Heehawing ended slavery. Heehawing got the right to vote. Heehawing ended Jim Crow. Heehawing got the civil rights bill passed. Instead of telling black people to shut up, maybe you should listen to them?