Wait, what? Supporting the rights of companies to actively discriminate is racism?
Please define what you are talking about. Are we talking about Hooters and their discrimination regarding their waitstaff? That one is not only legal, it's legally protected. NPOs? They discriminate on the basis of religion all the time (find me all the atheist and Muslim Catholic Priests).
I don't really like discriminatory companies, and I can see the sense in the current laws (and, in fact, support them), but I wouldn't call it racist to oppose them.
Sorry, forgot to reply to this.
Specific to basic libertarian ideals of as little government interference as possible, as explained to me by the in-laws I mentioned earlier, I'm talking about a hypothetical company that might literally refuse to hire or serve blacks, or Asians, or any other group or individual they wanted to exclude. I'm saying discrimination was described as a libertarian ideal, mind you. I'm saying that they oppose laws that would
prevent such a scenario.
There there isn't any direct logic that gets us from opposing such laws to being a racist. As I said, my in-laws oppose such laws, in an ideal sense, and I don't consider them racists in any tradition sense. At the same time, though, you have to wonder at least why someone might go out of their way to actively oppose those laws. For my in-laws, it's their rationalization for how they can support libertarian candidates that do. (Probably.)
But I'm a firm believer that if you understand the consequences beforehand, then you're responsible for them. This isn't always anything damning. For instance, we understand that under a typical Western justice system that a certain percentage of innocent people will be imprisoned, but that's OK because we consider it worse to leave crime unchecked. At the same time, we understand that in exchange for basic rights, some criminals will go free and people will suffer for that. And that's OK because basic rights are considered to be more important than safety to some degree.
If we eliminate anti-discrimination laws, it's understood that systematic discrimination will occur and that certain unpopular groups and individuals will suffer for it, and ultimately, society at-large will suffer for it. At least, that feels like a reasonable guess since those are the conditions that spawned the existing laws in the first place. So what's the upside of a Starbucks with a "no Pakistanis" sign in the window? I can't really think of any. I'm sure we could find a few if we twisted it enough, but the point is, do those advantages outweigh the known harmful consequences?
Someone who claims not to condone murder but approves a plan at his factory that he knows will result in hundreds of otherwise avoidable deaths in order to boost profitability is at odds with his claim. By extension, I think it can be reasonably claimed that someone who claims not to be a racist but repeals a law that offers little benefit but will definitely result in a significant uptick in racial discrimination is at odds with his claim.
I'm sorry that ended up being so long, but I wanted my argument to be clear. Thanks in advance for bearing with me.
And I wouldn't call it 'supporting racism' if Obama, or McCain, or Paul, or ANYONE ELSE got a $500 donation from Stephen Black. Yet that's the thing that's started these hysterics and whining, and Alt+F4 is still nattering on about it.
Got one, surely not. Knowingly accepted,
maybe. Without a doubt, candidates get money from all sorts of people they wouldn't approve of if they knew more about them. Again, the path from "gets support from racists" to "is a racist" isn't clear, direct, or in any way reliable. Candidates get support for a multitude of reasons, and when they oppose each other, it can be a judgment call. For instance, even though social conservatives are well-known to promote anti-gay policies, there are the Log Cabin conservatives. For them, the alignment with their other ideas outweighs that apparent contradiction. It would be silly to call the Log Cabin people anti-gay. For the same reason, it would be silly to call any other conservative anti-gay based purely on the fact that they're
voting conservative.
At the same time, there's that adage that if everyone likes you, you must be doing something right, and it's corollary, if no one likes you, you must be doing something wrong. But it leads to the obvious question for candidates: if people like your not based on what you do or don't stand for, what is it a candidate stands for that gets a bunch of racists on your side?
The kindest -- and strongest -- interpretation of that is that libertarians simply best resemble what people
prioritize their racism want to see. In a race between democrats who would only make things worse for racists, and Republicans, who
might make things worse but certainly wouldn't
dare make things better for the racists, and then there are the fringe parties whose agendas are much more extreme because they don't have much to lose anyway -- yet. So it makes sense that extremist racists wouldn't prefer either of the major parties, but why libertarians?
That, I think, has to do with the thought process I outlined above. Whether or not libertarians are aware of it, the
idealized version of their own philosophy (in itself an extremist dream most libertarians wouldn't necessarily approve of) resembles something extremist racists identify with. They needn't be aware of it or agree with it for it to be true. But I find it hard to believe that, deep down, high-ranking ideologues for the party haven't considered the ramifications of their ideology. Don't you?
And if they have, the implications of that understanding are, if not clear, reasonable to draw.
