I saw on Stossel's blog this morning that he replies to yesterdays ruff interview.
http://stossel.blogs.foxbusiness.com/2010/05/21/racism-and-rand-paul-%C2%A0/
May 21, 2010 10:18 AM UTC by John Stossel
Racism and Rand Paul
Megyn Kelly, on her show yesterday, berated me for defending Kentucky Senate candidate Rand Paul’s objection to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and for supporting the right of private business owners to decide who they serve.
This came up because Paul recently said this:
"I don't like the idea of telling private business owners [what to do]. I abhor racism. I think it's a bad business decision to ever exclude anyone from your restaurant -- but at the same time I do believe in private ownership. And I do think there should be absolutely no discrimination in anything that gets public funding. And that's mostly what the civil rights act was about."
The left is apoplectic: “Paul's lunch counter libertarianism disgusts us” is a typical comment on the Huffington Post.
Rand’s fellow Republicans cringed too. Everyone fears being called a racist. In response to the uproar, Paul issued a statement that said: "I unequivocally state that I will not support any efforts to repeal the Civil Rights Act of 1964."
None of it? How about the part that denies private citizens the right of free association? I hope Paul stands up to the pressure.
If not, freedom of association is in trouble. Will government tell the Black Student Association that they must admit Whites? Tell gay groups they must admit straights? I told Megyn Kelly:
"It's time now to repeal that part of the law. Because private businesses ought to get to discriminate. I won't ever go to a place that's racist, and I'll tell everybody else not to. And I'll speak against it. But it should be their right to be racist."
Racism is wrong. But I don't trust government to decide what discrimination is acceptable. After all, it was government that first legislated racism, first enforcing slavery, and then Jim Crow laws. The part of the Civil Rights Act that outlawed that is a good law.
But the clumsy fist of government cannot attack racism without stomping on the rights of individuals. The free market, as usual, will address the problem. It punishes racists. A business that doesn’t hire blacks will lose customers and good employees. It will atrophy while its more inclusive competitors thrive.
Media Matters sneers that: "Market forces hadn't exactly made anti-black discrimination disappear during the several centuries before the Civil Rights Act."
But the NY Post’s Robert George points out:
Companies couldn't stop discriminating even if they had wanted to: "Jim Crow also mandated discrimination in private enterprise (the opposite of today's reality which mandates desegregation). If you WANTED to open a restaurant (or run a hotel) that served blacks and whites equally, in most Southern states, you COULDN'T."
However, George is sure that Rand and Ron Paul get that:
Both Pauls make this issue sound like it's a minor point involving whether whites should be forced to serve blacks. Jim Crow was far more complicated than that. To be both philosophically and politically "right" from a libertarian POV, the answer is that "Jim Crow, a series of anti-freedom laws across the South, prevented open economic trade between free individuals. The federal government was correct to say that states can't prevent economic enterprise. It went too far, however, in policing individual decisions beyond that."
We are in agreement. But from what I understand, so are the Pauls. (George’s full column here.
Megan Kelly forwarded me this email from one of her viewers:
Megyn:
I am 73 years old and was raised in Louisiana, where I attended segregated schools, ate at segregated restaurants, etc. I did that not because I wanted to, but because it was the law.
Once that existing law was overturned, northern folk predicted riots ... None of that happened.
There are some idiot racists in the south, and elsewhere. But Stossel is correct, the market place would have done away with the racism, once the segregationist laws were removed. ... I was there and saw it. I do believe in the kindness and openness of people. If the laws requiring integration were repealed today, the south would remain the same as it is.... As a graduate of Yale, I know where lawyers come down on this. "A hammer sees everything as a nail."
Your reaction is the same as the law students I attended Yale with. They were wrong, and so are you. Stossel is correct.
Jerry Ainsworth
I love it when people end letters that way.
Read more: http://stossel.blogs.foxbusiness.com/2010/05/21/racism-and-rand-paul- /#ixzz0oZuUHtX2