The Hysterics Meet Their Match

Posted by Tom Woods on May 22nd, 2010 | 4 Comments »

Jacob Hornberger goes after the hysterics on the 1964 Civil Rights Act, as well as the claim that you must be a “racist” to oppose it. At this point, with the Tea Party “racist,” the GOP “racist,” libertarians “racist,” constitutionalists “racist,” nullifiers “racist,” and opponents of Obama “racist,” and with Keith Olbermann warning that people driving pickup trucks probably have sinister intentions and whites who call Obama “arrogant” are using a “racist” code word, presumably we are reaching saturation point, when people finally figure out this Orwellian smear is meaningless.

Leftist obsessions aside, the number of losers who sit around thinking of ways to do gratuitous harm to people for arbitrary reasons is vanishingly small. Leftists know it, too, or otherwise they wouldn’t favor mass immigration. How, in good conscience, could they invite so many vulnerable people from all over the world into a country still on the verge of segregation after decades of legal and moral penalties?

4 Responses to “The Hysterics Meet Their Match”

Gint Says:
May 22nd, 2010 at 9:35 am

Hornberger, in the end, makes his case for Libertarianism… so, i assume that you, Thomas, are suggesting that we consider it. Where can an Roman Catholic go to read more about Libertarianism from a conservative Catholic point of view? What are your views on that philosophy?

-g.
Charles Says:
May 22nd, 2010 at 8:00 pm

Here is another way of conceptualizing this issue.

In 1940, Ghandi wrote a letter to the British people, then at war with Germany, urging them to unilaterally cease hostilities:

“You will invite Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini to take what they want of the countries you call your possessions. Let them take possession of your beautiful island, with your many beautiful buildings. You will give all these but neither your souls, nor your minds. If these gentlemen choose to occupy your homes, you will vacate them. If they do not give you free passage out, you will allow yourself, man, woman and child, to be slaughtered, but you will refuse to owe allegiance to them …”

Now, nobody in his right mind would say that Ghandi was pro-Nazi. Rather, Ghandi embraced a philosophy of nonviolence, in which violence is never permissible. According to this philosophy, the threshold at which violence becomes an acceptable response or course of action is never to be reached.

The libertarian philosophy adheres to a different threshold for the employment of violence. The libertarian may not employ violence except defensively — that is, to repel an initial act of aggression against man or the property which is an extension of his life.

This is why libertarians advocate freedom of speech, including the expression of ideas which they find repulsive. Freedom of speech arises from the free employment of one’s property — be it the printing press, the lecture hall, or blogging software.

A business owner who refuses to serve customers on the basis of race is doing something most people — to include most libertarians — find repulsive. But he is not committing aggression against person or property. He is not violating anyone’s rights. Therefore, he has not crossed the threshold at which, according to libertarian principles, violence may be employed against him.

Leftists and, indeed, mainstream Americans, are so inconsistent in their determinations as to when violence is justified that such determinations are near-impossible to predict. But we may safely say that their threshold for the employment of violence is very low.
Tom Woods Says:
May 22nd, 2010 at 9:16 pm

There is a whole section on Catholic social teaching on the Articles page of this site that does just that, not to mention my book The Church and the Market.
Tim Says:
June 6th, 2010 at 2:16 am

Banking deregulation is politically incorrect at present. But a relatively recent NBER paper (See http://www.nber.org/papers/w14273) has this to say:

“…We find that bank deregulation reduced the racial wage gap by spurring the entry of non- financial firms. Consistent with taste-based theories, competition reduced both the racial wage gap and racial segregation in the workplace, particularly in states with a comparatively high degree of racial prejudice, where competition-enhancing bank deregulation eliminated about one-quarter of the racial wage gap after five years.”

One quarter of the racial wage gap after five years??

How many years ago was the Civil Rights Act enacted?

If any piece of social legislation did as well the liberals and progressives would wet themselves with publicity.

Competitive markets create a disincentive for discrimination. And unlike civil service agencies they don’t take long lunch hours. They are, in short, a color blind anti-discrimination agency that never sleeps.

Modern liberals and progressives by pushing for statist policies that wrap the economy up in cartel friendly and cartel promoting regulations (i.e. almost all of them) do far more to promote and protect discrimination than the K.K.K. ever did. The few anti-discrimination policies and laws they favor are mere crumbs from the masters’ plate.

About Tom Woods

Thomas E. Woods, Jr., is the New York Times bestselling author of ten books. A senior fellow of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, Woods holds a bachelor's degree in history from Harvard and his master's, M.Phil., and Ph.D. from Columbia University. Read more »