Defining the noun "Liberal"

Short version:

 

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If you do it, you have no freedom of contract. Point. Because these evil white racists have no freedom of contract, and this is already sufficient to prove the point.

You claim, therefore, reduces to the thesis that in some circumstances freedom of contract is somehow impossible. In principle. Are such situations possible? Indeed, such situations are imaginable. The classical example is the life boat, where you have several guys but only one can survive. If one guy owns all the food, this is simply not acceptable to the other people, because they have to die if they accept it, and so they will fight. For their own survival. And possibly even kill each other. (Except they have some moral values which are, for them, higher than their own survival. But these would have to be principles with more than a pragmatic, utilitarian justification. )

So, while in principle such constructions are possible, your examples do not come even close to this. Of course, if nobody sells you something to eat over, say, a week, you will steal something to eat. So, total boycotts in things which are really necessary for survival are quite stupid, because they simply lead to the destruction of the rule of law by the excluded outlaws. It is also, in general, well-known that unjust distributions of property increase the danger of revolutions.

But that there exist, in principle, such dangers for the rule of law, does not mean that has to reject the very idea of the rule of law. It only means that the rule of law has boundaries. And a liberal society, which is a society with rule of law, necessarily shares this danger, and has, therefore, boundaries, but this does not mean that it has to be rejected.

Sewer systems are offtopic here, I have considered here all the time the classical liberal theory as well as the libertarian theory in the minarchist variant, where some general law exists. The point was not to question minarchism, with its acceptance of some minimal taxation and some minimal public property. For that minimal public property, where would have to be an equal freedom to use it for all citizens, it is, last but not least, their property too. In a racist gated community blacks are not even allowed to enter, so there is no problem at all if they are not allowed the public property of this gated community too.

Whatever, there is a known argument, not about an impossibility of a liberal/libertarian society, but that it may be not accepted by the poor if the distribution of property becomes too unequal. This is a danger for the continuing existence, not an impossibility. (Marxist theory claims that this danger is unavoidable, capitalism would lead to extremal inequality, and, once this is reached, to revolution. But what's wrong with this theory is another problem.)

The only real objection against racist gated communities remains the freedom to travel to the own property as well as from this property to the world outside, which is a minor and easy to solve one. How it was solved in the past is indicated by the word "sundown town": The blacks were allowed to travel through the town during daylight, which is enough time for small as well as medium towns. It does not include the right to use slave labor in motels.

 

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That is of course false - evil white racists still have a great deal of freedom of contract, and are restricted in one specific respect only. They can't use race as a criterion for commercially dealing with a member of the public.

And neither can anyone else.

So with the law enforced, people have greater equal freedom of contract - non-racist whites and blacks gain a great deal of freedom of contract, white racists lose almost no freedom of contract, they end up with equal freedom of contract.

No, that's your claim. You are the guy with the conflicting absolute freedoms, which cannot exist simultaneously.

You have been handed a real life example: the United States, in the old Confederacy regions and some others. You don't have to strain your clearly inadequate imagination - you can inform yourself about the real world.

Oh bullshit - that again?
I'm not going around this three times. Reread the thread: You've been informed about the United States example, the reasoning in general, and the several reasons that sentence there is silly - not just false, but a ridiculous thing to claim. Deal with reality, or vanish up your own ass again.

 

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Governance uses law, at least if it supports the general principle of a state of law. And the theories apply to law. As I have explained in detail.

They work also on a small scale if applied in a totalitarian way. Because, as explained in my examples, on a small scale it can be easily avoided, if there is a state of law. So, if it works even on a small scale in the US, this points to a high degree of totalitarian control.

Which is, indeed, what has to be expected in a land famous for extremely high penalties and the highest incarceration rates of the whole world.

So, you remain unable to get the point that a moral theory, or a theory of law is not an empirical theory, thus, cannot be falsified empirically. One can reject it based on another theory, one can reject it based on some utilitarian arguments (which works if the theory is justified by utilitarian considerations - but you have not done it up to now), but not simply by some empirical observations.

But to do this you have to violate basic liberal principles. So you cannot do it based on classical liberalism. Only based on American liberalism, which is not liberalism at all, because it has a completely distorted notion of rights and liberties incompatible with self-ownership and freedom of contract.

You have not made any theoretical argument, except the repetition of the claim of "civil rights and liberties", without specifying what is included in these "rights and liberties".

There is no such animal as an "actual right". A right is always theoretical. You have an actual situation, A wants to do X and B does not like it. Has A the right to do X or not? The answer is something which requires a lot of theoretical work, usually done by lawyers. It certainly requires interpretation, that means, something based on a theory which real world behavior has to be named in which way.

If consistency would be the problem, this would be a theoretical problem too. A theory which is inconsistent does not have to be rejected empirically, it is inconsistent because of purely theoretical reasons. Instead, some empirical facts alone cannot lead to consistency problems.

If you are interested in the question how an empirical problem can invalidate such a theory of law, then you have to think about empirical consequences of the application of the theory which are in conflict with an utilitarian justification of the theory. One typical problem is that nature has a continuum of variants, while theories of law work with discrete classifications. To apply such a discrete theory to the continuum you have to make some quite arbitrary cuts. Say, the day of birth, or the day of conception, or some arbitrary date between them to define the applicability of the notion "human" to some collection of cells in reality. Or various ages of maturity, of consent and so on. To give even young children full equal rights would have consequences which many people consider as unacceptable from an utilitarian point of view. So, liberal theory was modified, and refers in essential parts to adults only, and only in some parts to human beings in general.

But it does not fail to apply to reality. Child right advocated apply it to reality without any problems. It fails to be compatible with the wishes of the people.

The theory does not have a problem with reality at all. It may have a problem of compatibility with your wishes.

You don't want a liberal government. You want an American liberal government, which would be, according to liberal theory, classified as a quite totalitarian one. This is not a conflict of liberal theory with reality, it is a conflict between liberal theory and your ideals, your wishes, your ideas about an ideal society.

 

Once they are restricted, they have no freedom of contract. Point. Restrictions of freedom are always specific, so that this is not an excuse. Even in Soviet and Nazi time, people were allowed to speak freely about a lot of very different things, like the weather. There freedom of speech was restricted in a few specific respects only.

There is no such conflict. Freedom of contract is the freedom to have a contract if all sides voluntarily agree. What conflict?

Ok, time to end the discussion.

Let's summarize:

1.) It has been clearly shown that in several questions there are important differences between classical liberal/libertarian principles and American liberalism (if we consider iceaura simply as presenting the ideas of American liberalism).

2.) American liberalism appears to be in great conflict with several classical liberal/libertarian principles: Self-ownership, freedom of contract, property rights. It uses 1984 newspeak, giving "civil rights and liberties" a nonsensical meaning, in conflict with the meaning of "civil rights and liberties" in liberal/libertarian theory.

3.) Iceaura seems unable to understand elementary conceptual things, namely that moral theories/theories of law are not empirical theories, thus, cannot be in direct conflict with reality. This invalidates the great majority of iceaura's arguments. Theories of law may appear to be in conflict with our wishes, or with other theories of law, but not with reality itself.

4.) That the creation of gated racist communities, where white racists would exist in volitional ghettos, without disturbing blacks with their racism, would diminish the problems related with racism, is completely ignored. Iceaura seems to prefer a society where blacks and white racists have to live together, with the blacks in power, and the obligation for white racists to submit, having every day many contacts with blacks which they do not want but are obliged to have by law. Such a mindset can be understood emotionally as a sort of revenge for slavery, making the whites the new slaves, with some modification of the rhetoric to hide this. But this will unavoidably lead to more racist conflicts. Which is what we observe.

5.) Anyway, I have to thank iceaura for the interesting discussion. I have learned something from it too. Namely, I was forced to defend a point which has been made by Walter Block in a different context, a point which I have rejected before as in principle ok but some sort of cheap avoidance of the problem discussed there, but which, as became clear to me now, is much stronger and in fact the decisive point.

 

They work without being applied in a totalitarian way, across a broad enough range of scales that they remove the conflict of liberties and create a state of equal rights and liberties under the law.

And since it doesn't, you can relax - it stops working at the very level the racism stops denying black people their rights and liberties.

I understand perfectly that a theory which does not apply to physical actions, and is not intended to guide physical behavior, cannot be thrown into conflict with itself empirically no matter how poorly reasoned.

And if you don't do it your governance violates basic liberal principles. So you have a problem, because you were careless in your formulation of those "basic liberal principles". You overlooked some key issues.

You can abandon any hope of even approximately liberal government, or recognize that you have built an error into your theory and fix it. Your choice. (The error is in your theoretical handling of physical fact).

That is true of your theory only if you never apply it. If you do apply your theory, you immediately confront direct conflicts among its principles, including self-contradiction of some - such as freedom of contract.

Your theory, applied as you apply it to the US, brings your version of freedom of contract for racist whites in direct conflict with almost all freedoms - including your version of freedom of contract - for everybody else.

You force a choice - one or the other. You can't have both, physically, under your "liberal" law. You can't have that freedom for racist whites, and any freedoms for blacks (including that one). Physically, you can't. The US physical situation blocks you.

This is a consequence of your interpreting any restriction on any aspect of freedom of contract for racist whites - even a specific targeted restriction of criteria in one respect, applied to voluntary commercial dealings with the public only - as enslavement and utterly wrong. You end up (in any situation like the US) with a government that cannot defend black people against the loss their civil rights and liberties, and so cannot establish equal rights and liberties under the law.

And that is what you are claiming is the moral result of a "classic liberal" government - a citizenry unequally and significantly deprived of basic rights and liberties under the law.

 

I remove the side issue how totalitarian the enforcement of actual US obligations to do slave labor are.

Two serious conceptual errors in a single sentence, not bad.
1.) It is intended to guide physical behavior. It, in particular, prescribes how the law code should look like. And the law code is clearly intended to guide physical behavior.
2.) Of course, even purely theoretical constructions can be inconsistent and have internal contradictions.

Not basic liberal principles, but "American liberal" principles. If liberal theory is in conflict with American liberal principles, this is not my problem, but my claim. These are very different theories. American liberalism is, in essential points, a totalitarian ideology.

At least some progress - no longer a conflict with reality, but with theoretical handling of reality.

There is, indeed, no big hope for an approximately liberal government. Because those who have the real power, the oligarchs, are not at all interested in a liberal government. Does it mean that it is useless? Not at all. Because it works as an ideal. An ideal allows to criticize what we observe in reality as unjust, and that a just solution would be better for the people. Even if the just society will not be created, the oligarchs have to make at least some compromises, some small shifts toward a more just society.

Wrong. If conflicts among its principles are possible in reality, they are visible theoretically too, and to see this is even much easier. Because you can use theoretical extremal situations to test them, extremal situations which will never happen in reality, and even if they happen in reality the problems could be attributed to something else. In the extremal theoretical construction, the conflicts can be easily identified, and excuses easily removed by modifying the extremal example itself so that the excuse is no longer applicable. Similar for self-contradictory theories. If it is self-contradictory, this can be seen much more easily in pure theory.

The notion of freedom of contract does not have any self-contradiction. It has the very specific property that it may, in some circumstances, give you nothing at all - namely if all other people refuse to sign any contracts with you. So, this is a right which is useful only to people who are able to cooperate, to find people who agree to sign contracts with them, and even for those people only under some circumstances, because even they may be boycotted, for whatever reasons.

Is this a contradiction, a self-contradiction? Not at all. At most, it is a contradiction with the idea of "equal rights" as giving different people something of equal value. Which is not a liberal idea at all.

Nonsense. You seem to think that "freedom of contract" means somebody is obliged to sign a contract with you if you like. This is not the liberal concept of "freedom of contract". You may have full, unrestricted freedom of contract, and have, at the same time, no chance for actually signing such a contract at all, simply because nobody else likes to sign a contract with you.

I think the nature of freedom of contract is nicely illustrated by the particular example of sexual freedom. Even if there is complete sexual freedom, this does not give you the right to have sex with somebody who does not agree to have sex with you. So, you may appear even completely without any sex, maybe because you are very ugly, maybe because you are gay but all men in your environment hetero, or whatever. Sexual freedom is not the right to have some sexual partner. It is the right to have all, but only all those sexual partners who agree to have sex with you.

You seem to think that freedom of contract means that there has to be a possibility to sign some sort of contract for everybody. Maybe even with equal conditions. This may be the American liberal meaning of freedom of contract, but is certainly not the classical liberal or libertarian meaning.

Indeed, the liberal society is not a society of equality. The ugly will have less choices for sex than the sexual attractive, possibly even none at all, and therefore "significantly deprived" of his basic "sexual rights and liberties".

The alternative for this is described in the totalitarian dystopia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_(novel) . You get a number, by the government, which makes the choice of your sexual partner for this night.

 

They are your errors, not mine. You are the one claiming that your theory
1) cannot be thrown into contradiction with itself by empirical fact, and is - therefore - independent of such fact (contains no "if" clauses dependent on fact), useless for evaluating many real situations, and not intended as a guide for behavior.
2) to be used to both evaluate real political systems and guide political behavior.

Make up your mind.

It seems to be impossible for you. So the physical illustration of your problem can be useful - in particular, by making the corner you are in perfectly clear: in the US, right now, your theory forces a liberal government to make a mutually exclusive choice between freedom for one group, and freedom for another, by the way it defines freedom of contract. Under the law. That choice itself contradicts your theory's principles. So your theory cannot be applied to the United States - either in guidance, or evaluation. You can't reason from a self-contradictory theory, and your theory becomes one as soon as it is applied to the United States (and any similar situation).

Do I have to remind you of the consequences of adopting self-contradictory principles of law? It hands governance to force alone.

Your formulation of the "liberal" freedom of contract leads directly to self-contradiction when applied to the United States. It claims that two mutually exclusive realities exist: unrestricted freedom of contract for white racists (in reality); unrestricted freedom of contract for other people (in reality). As in any chain of reasoning that leads to the claim "A is true, and not-A is true", something has gone wrong.

No, I don't seem to think any such thing. I explicitly excluded that, several times, above. I even listed a few of the many, many criteria by which someone can refuse to sign a contract. And you know that. So what are you doing?

You miss the point. Not equality, but equal rights and liberties under the law, are what is at stake. Nobody is worried about whether people are "equal" in any general sense, and that topic is not relevant here.

You have now made that error consistently for several months, in reading my posts and other stuff, and refused all correction. Why? It's not a profound matter - obviously we are talking about equal rights and liberties under liberal governance, as per the thread topic. Obviously people are and will remain unequal in many other and irrelevant respects, under all systems of government. Does this confuse you, or are you trying to deflect attention from something?

 

A lie. Only the first part is true. A theory which can be in conflict with empirical evidence is an empirical theory. It has to make testable, falsifiable empirical predictions. A moral theory tells what is good or bad, a theory of law tells what is good law and bad law. These are in no way empirical predictions. So such theories cannot be in conflict with empirical observations, with reality.

What follows is your fantasy, and I have never claimed such nonsense. A theory which tells us what is good and bad is obviously intended to guide our behavior. We should do good things, have good, just laws, not? These theories tell us what is good and bad, what is just law and unjust law. So its very intention is to guide our behavior.

So far, a triviality. It defines freedom of contract, and forces a liberal government to support freedom of contract. If a government does not follow this prescription, it is not liberal. So, given that to create a gated community on private property is part of freedom of contract, it forces a liberal government to legalize this. And it forbids a liberal government to have laws which force fotographers to sign contracts with gays, if they don't like to do this, because this violates freedom of contract. So, liberal principles, like freedom of contract, is a guide for behavior.

No. You have not shown any contradiction. Not even in a hypothetical situation. What you name a violation of "civil rights and liberties" I have clearly rejected, they are in no way civil rights and liberties, nor in classical European liberal nor in libertarian theory.

Sorry. The freedom of contract is a freedom which gives you nothing without the volitional agreement of the other side of the contract. So, there is nothing mutually exclusive.

I state the fact that there can be no restriction of the freedom to refuse to sign a contract, if there is no slavery. Once you support restrictions of the freedom to refuse to sign a contract, you advocate slavery, and reject freedom of contract. It is very simple: If there is freedom of contract, there can be no need to justify the refusal of a contract. You don't want to sign, that's all. I do not even have to tell you, or the government, why I refuse to sign the contract.

The discussion about the criteria was about a different question. Namely, once you live in a totalitarian society without freedom of contract, how easy is it to circumvent the totalitarian regulations. This is relevant if you want to estimate how totalitarian the society is. For the decision if the society is liberal or not, they are not relevant at all. All one needs is that in some situations it may be forbidden for me to refuse to sign the contract. (Liberal theory has only one exception for this rule, namely a prior contract, voluntarily signed by myself, which creates such an obligation to sign certain contracts. Say, in a job contract as a salesman.)

I try my best to make sense of your position. Unfortunately, I see no consistent way to make sense of your position.

You claim that somehow black man should have rights to be served by a white racists hotel. In violation of freedom of contract. Freedom of contact is clearly a right which is an equal right for all people. The black women can refuse to have sex with the white man, the white man can also refuse to have sex with the black man. Neither race nor gender matters here. Everybody is free to refuse to sign every contract with everybody else for whatever reason, without even an explanation for this refusal. So, freedom of contract itself in no way violates equality before the law.

What could justify your mystical right to be served at the motel? Some idea of equality would be a possibility. The white man has the possibility to stay were, the black man not, he is frustrated and wants an "equal right" to stay there.

But in liberal/libertarian theory he does not have such a right. Because the possibility to stay in a motel, once the motel is privately owned, is in liberal/libertarian theory regulated by freedom of contract. That means, it does not exist as a right. The white man has no right to stay there by law, the black man has no right to stay there by law, above need the volitional agreement of the motel owner to stay there, which may be given or not, without an explanation if not given. Thus, the principle of equal rights does not help you here too.

The private decision of the white racist motel owner not to allow black customers is not a law, but nothing but a private whim. Therefore it does not create any inequality before the law.
But it creates an actual real inequality. The white man has a nice play to stay, the black man not. Not nice, but such is life in a liberal society where some citizens are white racists not reeducated in the reeducation camp.

For whatever reason, you claim that this is a violation of equal rights. You may mean equal rights before the law - ok, in this case you are simply wrong. See above. So, it has to be some other "equal right". Given that there is, in this situation, an inequality in reality, and taking into account your horrible confusion about what reality can tell us about moral theories or theories of law, and given the strong socialist/communist tradition of inventing similar "social rights", it seems quite plausible that you invent some "social right" or so to be served at the motel.

 

Consider the reality of racial oppression in the US. Consider the role of liberal government - bound to defend equal rights and liberties before the law. Penny drop?

Your theory involves testable, falsifiable, empirical assumptions as well as predictions - either that, or it does not apply to the real world.

They are exactly the same as what you claim are inviolable for white racists.

This is getting just strange. What about the concept of black people being excluded from such contracts is confusing to you? It's right there in plain English, and the example of the US is ready to hand.
Black people were, and would be again, frequently prevented from making many such contracts with anyone, regardless of their volition or agreement. Physically prevented, by voluntary cooperation among white racists. You saw the example of the truck driving job.

And that freedom of contract is defined, and limited, by all manner of restrictions regarding the definition of "ownership", the nature of an enforceable contract, etc.

The sum of such private decisions denied black people freedom of contract, freedom of travel, and so forth. In fact. In the US. That created inequality of civil rights and liberties under the law. In fact.

The bold is fine, as before. The rest is the same old muddleheaded slough, as before.

For a triviality, you're having a remarkably hard time wrapping your head around the basic situation. Take the obvious, simple, everyday one once again: Voluntary white racist communities, if allowed in the US, deny black people all kinds of civil liberties and freedoms enjoyed by white people and supposedly defended by liberal government, such as freedom of contract and freedom of travel. A US government cannot allow them, and defend civil liberties, both. If you allow the one, you deny the other.

Or you could revisit your assumptions, in your definition of freedom of contract and your reasoning therefrom, and fix your theory.

Choose.

 

No. Because what you reject are very important liberal equal rights and liberties, namely self-ownership and freedom of contract.

Explain how moral theories - which distinguish what is good and what is bad - and theories of law - which do the same thing for laws - make testable empirical predictions. Testable empirical predictions, not "if you follow this moral theory, after death you will end up in paradise". If you cannot do this, explain why you think that moral prescriptions - like "this behavior is bad" - do not apply to the real world. They obviously apply, given that they lead to moral punishments of people who show such behavior.

Note, we are talking yet about the theories themselves. Not about an utilitarian justification of such theories, which contain such predictions, of type "with liberal law, the society will be more peaceful and more prosperous in the long run", which would be, without doubt, testable.

No. Your black man has some right to stay in the motel against the wish of the motel owner. According to me, no white man has such a right. He may be refused to stay in the motel, because he is gay, looks strange, smells badly, is a catolic, or a jew, has red hair, or has looked in an inappropriate way at the daughter of the motel owner. The motel owner is not even obliged to tell him why.

All I concede is that your version can be given a form where it does not violate the "equal rights" itself. But even this is difficult, if, for example, the law prescribes quota, or even if statistics can be used to prove a violation of your laws.

The point is that freedom of contract is not a right to get some contracts. It is, first of all, a right to reject contracts. The own volition is not sufficient to get a contract, as well as the own sexual wish does not give you a right to have sex. So, once there is volitional decision of black haters not to make contracts with blacks, the blacks will not have contracts with these black haters. If the iceaura haters of the world decide not to sign contracts with iceaura, iceaura will be unable to sign contracts - with iceaura haters. Their freedom of contract is not even endangered, the blacks can have contracts with all the people of the world which are not black haters, and iceaura can have contracts with all people of the world which are not iceaura haters - if they make them sufficiently attractive offers, of course, to get their volitional agreement.

That freedom of contract is, in the real world, heavily restricted, is correct. That's a characteristic property of modern corporatism, of economic fascism. Your use of scare quotes around "ownership" is, in the actual situation, quite justified, because not much of liberal ownership concepts remains in a modern regulated society. But it is irrelevant for liberal theory, which is a theory how law should be, not how law actually is.

No. There can be no denial of freedom of contract because somebody refuses to sign a contract with you, simply because freedom of contract does not give you anything if the other side refuses to sign a contract with you. By the very definition of this right. Once there is nothing the right gives you in that situation, this right cannot be denied. There is nothing to be denied.

Freedom of travel we have discussed, and there was agreement that it exists, in the form of the right to travel to own property, and to leave it to travel to the outside world. But there was no agreement that, in this specified form, it would be really denied. Even your past examples, the "sundown towns", do not fit, because they allow travel even through these towns during daylight.

No. Black people are allowed, in this case, to have their own black racist gated communities. They should be allowed, necessarily, because of equality before law, once white racist gated communities are allowed.

Now, in the black racist communities, whites are denied all what you name (but are not) "civil liberties and freedoms enjoyed" by the black people living there. They are even denied the right to enter them. Because this is property of the community, in this case of a black racist one. So that a liberal government is only supposed to defend the property rights of the black racists, and, that means, to prevent whites from entering it, once they have no permission of the owner to enter it.

A simply connected gated community, with a right of the public to go around its border, without enclaves containing property of non-members, does not endanger freedom of travel, as far as it exists in liberal theory, of non-members, even if it completely forbids to travel through the territory.

So, yes, I deny the existence of "rights and liberties" you claim to exist. Like the "right" to use some motel without the agreement of the owner of the motel. Your "right" to use it does not exist in liberal theory, even if the owner grants permission to use it to everybody except you. And therefore I deny that a liberal government is supposed to defend these non-existent rights.

So, indeed, the US government cannot be liberal and defend "civil liberties" as you define them. This is not a problem for my theory, because in my theory these "civil liberties" have never been civil liberties, and my version of liberal theory clearly prescribes a liberal government only to defend the rights and liberties of my version of liberal theory. If the resulting society violates "rights and liberties" as defined by American liberalism, this is not a problem of my version of liberal theory. It is only a conflict between two different theories.

BTW, I miss yet an answer to the following questions:

 

I rejected your formulation of freedom of contract, and told you why: I rejected it because it doesn't work - it leads to conflict with itself, with its own formulation, when applied to real situations of contract. You have to change it, or abandon principled governance of real nations under it, in fact.

I don't care what you call your new formulation of what everybody else who knows what they are talking about calls "liberal principles".

But they are prevented from doing that physically - and they are also denied many other rights and liberties that they cannot, physically, deny white people. The difference is in the physical reality. You are allowing racist white people to deny black people their civil rights and liberties, under your governance.

But not all contracts, for any reason - one cannot necessarily, for example, agree to provide a service over the phone, and then deny the service to the person who has driven a hundred miles for it, without cause.
The terms under which one can fail to provide a service one has agreed to provide to the public are regulated and limited, in any system of law - it's part of the definition of "contract". These regulations are supposed to be established according to liberal principles - right?

Or as I put it, and you apparently failed to read:

I have never argued for any such right. I have explicitly argued against it. I listed, for example, several of the dozens of criteria by which a motel owner can reject a customer, including that they don't like the person. I have argued only for the very same equal civil rights and liberties under the law you claim are essential,

with the sole difference that I require they exist in the real world - I require that a so-called "liberal" government defend them, and prevent their denial.

Three answers is enough. The issue is the physical fact of denial of rights to others, unequally, in physical fact - the loss of equal civil rights and liberties for some, due to too much control of the landscdape by others. None of your bs about religion, or sex, or any of that, is relevant. Read what's posted, or fuck off.

Here's your problem, again:

 

So, you want, for the black people, the physical "right" to be served by the white racist motel owner, because they cannot prevent the white motel owner to serve white people.

But the white owner of the motel owns the motel. That means, he decides who is allowed to enter it, and who is not. Once you think that this violates the "rights" of the blacks, that means, you simply reject the standard liberal notion of ownership. White racists are not allowed to own anything, because, if they, as owners, share it with other whites, but only whites, not with blacks, there is some inequality. In physical reality. Ownership of the motel, which is a legal difference between the motel owner and the black guy, clearly leads to an inequality in physical reality. The white owner can decide who visits the motel, the black guy cannot.

But I thought that physical inequality in reality does not matter:

Yes, these contradictions confuse me.

Rights related with ownership are unequal rights, by construction. The owner has all the rights, everybody else has no rights at all. Maybe your "equal rights" talk means that you reject ownership rights completely, once they are necessarily unequal rights? This would be extremal communism, not liberalism. Not even American liberalism.

If you, instead, accept rights related with ownership, and even that these rights are unequal rights, so that the motel owner, even if an evil white racist, is allowed to decide what happens in the motel, and the black guy is not, when, what is the problem with the "difference in physical reality"? Yes, the black guy is not allowed to enter the motel, the white guy is allowed, inequality, of course, but nothing but the usual standard accepted inequality of property rights.

If one agrees to provide a service, this is usually already a contract. Has always been. Illiterates have all their contracts made in such verbal ways. Some standardization of such less formal ways to make contracts may be reasonable and acceptable, but their role in a liberal government with freedom of contract is simply to define the form of a contract, without regulating its content.
(Of course, even such standardization should not be different for different races, and is not.)

I think you have. Once you think that there are some criteria the owner can use, and other criteria the owner is not allowed to use, you presuppose that there is some other instance, the government, which can ask the owner for the reasons why he has rejected the black customer, and decide that the owner has rejected the customer for wrong reasons. Thus, that the rejected customer had a right to be served and to use the motel. But that means that, in some situations, namely if the motel owner has no other reason to reject the black customer than illegal reasons, he is obliged to serve him, to allow him to enter, even if he does not like this. In these special circumstances, you obviously argue for a right of the black customer to use the motel against the will of the owner.

By the way, if "I don't like you" would be sufficient for rejection, the law would be useless. Because "I don't like you, because you are black, and I don't like blacks in general" is a particular case of "I don't like you", so it would be legal for white racists to reject blacks. And all the methods you have described how to prove that one has violated your law would be completely useless.

There was not a single one.

Do you think that it is part of civil liberties to visit Holy Places of other religions to urinate and masturbate, and therefore this civil liberty should be, of course, allowed and protected by the government?

If not, what makes the principal, conceptual difference between the liberty to urinate and masturbate in the Holy place of another religion, and the liberty for a black to use a bar or a motel of a white racist?

 

Modern Liberalism can be explained with an analogy. Say you were putting together an Olympic basketball team, with the goal of winning the gold metal? Liberalism would try to make sure the team reflects the demographics of the culture. It will need to have so many men, women, blacks, white and other races, homosexuals, handicaps people.

Conservatism would have tryouts, where the best players are asked to tryout regardless of a quota system based on superficial things. Which of the two teams will be more successful? Which of the two will call the other sexist and racists? Liberalism is racist and sexists, since it fixates on race and sex, and not on the best results.

The liberals attribute the Trump victory to his courting the angry white male. One way to prove this liberal stereo type is false, is to consider that this group likes to watch sports. They are not concerned with having all white teams. They only want a good team with the best players. It is about results and a winning team to be proud of.

I think the problem with modern liberalism is all the righteous stuff was already done by the 1970's. After things peaked out, Liberalism started to make mountain out of mole hills, so the next generation could play the righteousness game.

 

Except all of that is a load of right wing crap....it's those damn facts again that keep interrupting right wing delusions. Liberalism espouses equal opportunity, not equal results. Liberalism is against setting up artificial barriers to entry in order to protect established persons and entities. It's the antithesis of right wing ideology.

In your little story there liberals would set up competitive events open to all and the best athletes win. Your so called "conservatives" would only allow certain individuals to compete. Only if they had the right skin color or come from the right background could they compete. That's the conservative way. Conservatives practice exclusion. Liberals practice Liberals are for equal opportunity, not equal results, and for you to assert otherwise is either gross ignorance or gross ideological delusion or some combination thereof.

 

I'm of the opinion that restroom masturbation is as generally as inappropriate as any other similar sex act, but that also means there are circumstances by which the only issue is whoever wants to check on how someone is using a bathroom. Yet in the restroom or all over the altar, if you you can't tell the difference between that and, say, buying a drink or renting a room for the night, pretty much nobody can help you resolve whatever weird questions you might derive therefrom.

 

The question was not about the difference - that there is a difference is clear, and I have used this particular example because there is an obvious and very big difference.

The question is about the principal, conceptual difference. Because from a general point of view, the two situations have also much in common. There is a property of one group (the racist-owned motel, the church of the other religion) and this group will not allow some people into this property, because of their prejudices against them. But iceaura claims that this should be allowed and even enforced by the government, at least in one case. I would guess (hope), in the other case not. And this would be the interesting question - what would make the difference, where you have a right to enter property where the owners do not want you to enter, but this is nonetheless a "right" and should be enforced by the government.

Iceaura understands the problem very well, and therefore refuses to answer.

 

A conceptual difference, maybe? That is important to you?

From your point of view. Quit overstating.

It sounds like what you want is for the government to set rules for public square participation that allow a person to exclude others from the public square. Perhaps you're accidentally omitting something that would clarify? Because in the American tradition we explicitly describe this as hypocrisy. There are, however, Americans who are aware of this and just don't care; they say dumb things like their equal rights are violated unless they have superior protection under the law, and this complaint you propose is pretty much an overworn, pathetic, familiar excuse.

Your need to specifically craft an alternate reality by which your bizarre comparisons have some relevance is entirely derivative of your own personal priorities and foci. To wit, masturbation and urination. If you cannot tell the difference between lewd conduct generally prescribed as illegal and mundane business that is the stuff of everyday community and function, pretty much nobody can help you resolve whatever weird questions you might derive therefrom.

 

Well, no. Conservatism would have tryouts, but the players who got the spots would be the sons of the biggest supporters of the team. Mexicans would be excluded because they were all rapists, and gays would be excluded because . . . locker rooms! Scary!

That is equivalent to claiming that slaveowners were not racists, because they considered blacks to be the best workers, and they were proud of how much cotton their slaves could pick.

 

Once upon a time, you and I disagreed about some human rights rhetoric, and I'm not certain that's particularly important other than to remind that, while we might certainly agree on any number of aspects about this, that, and the other, we do still sometimes have markedly different perspectives about the underlying ideas. And what I'm asking this time is kind of vague; to wit:

They only want a good team with the best players. It is about results and a winning team to be proud of.

(Wellwisher, #214↑)​

Let us run with that, for moment. Because one of the things that keeps happening with certain arguments of Liberty and Justice for All is that it ends up meaning, practically speaking, a constricted segment of the population.

So once upon a time, sure, all of that stuff in the Preamble about establishing Justice for ourselves and our posterity, for instance, really meant for white male Christian property owners. And from there, it seems like everybody (A) wants into the club, and (B) wants to keep someone else out. It's the weirdest thing.

But I do wonder "what else" you see in all of that pride and prejudice we keep hearing; I mean, to me there's this line about of course that's what they mean by liberty, just look at Kim Davis. It really does seem the same thing.

Because you're looking at this idea and seeing something very familiar, at least as I read your expression. But, where I honestly think that outcome―okay, sure, start with the slave owners and posture that as the true meaning of Liberty or Justice in the Preamble―is part of what we're dealing with, even today, I also wonder what you see by, or relative to, that context.

It always feels like segregationists always presume their group will somehow filter to the top of the hierarchy. And it also seems like a tacit "liberty of authority"; that is, the executive has the liberty to discriminate against the managers who have the liberty to discriminate against the supervisors who have the liberty to discriminate against the workers who have the liberty to discriminate against the customers who have the liberty to discriminate against each other.

There is a bit from Brust, The Viscount of Adrilankha, in which two servants, Mica and Fawnd, hang out in the wine cellar at Castle Black, reflecting on their strange adventures. They discuss a thesis on human comfort. Their society involves seventeen divisions plus two additional species. But you start with fifteen of the seventeen Houses, and the idea is that everybody wants to have someone to look down on. Thus, the Phoenix look down on the Dragon; the Dragon look down on the Lyorn; the Lyorn look down on the Tiassa, and so on, all the way down through the "noble" houses to looking down on the Jhereg (organized criminals) who in turn look down on the Teckla (peasants). And the Teckla? They look down on the Easterners, a separate species, who are smaller, frailer, and live a mere eighty years compared to the two to three millennia of the society's master species. And the Easterners? They look down on the Serioli, yet another species. And if Dragaerans, who call themselves human, are elves who stand seven feet and live three thousand years, Easterners are humans like most we might recognize in the history of, say, European civilization (necessarily including the trials and tribulations of the Roma), and Serioli are representative in the equation of premodern tribal societies, though the stories at hand add their twists, like the ability of those premodern tribal people to ward off the most powerful creatures in the Universe. That is, sure, the stuff was made to ward off mere gods, but it turns out they're also at least somewhat effective against the people the gods fear. Which also kind of leads to the point. The Serioli? They look down on everybody else. So it all works out because fiction must eventually make sense.

I don't know. It just seems you could be closer to the truth than we might otherwise expect given what you responded to. What do you see when you start following that notion through history?