Ron Paul for President--Part IV

Again, we get back to that list where I need to know on what basis people have to be treated equally. Do I have to treat people equally based on race? On sex (so women-only gyms are illegal?)? On religion (what if I think Jews are evil?)? And so on.

We can extend this out. You would agree that I can choose to exclude people from my house based on whatever criteria I want, be it race, ugliness, or whatever? If I decide to sell lemonade, does that change anything?

It's not as simple as you make it sound.

Well, the Supreme Court believes that growing a plant in your backyard that you consume yourself is "interstate commerce".

Which is why we need a smaller government like Ron Paul (remember him?) wants. We've seen that if you give the government an inch, they take a light year. Especially when people like George W. Bush get in power.

 

I've wondered about this myself, as I waste my precious time reading dannytoone's inane drivel. Ultimately, my best explanation is that the Ron Paul political mentality is so astoundingly unrealistic, that I find it fascinating to watch people who actually believe it. Kind of like the Hare Krishnas or the Moonies or the Jim Jones gang. How people can be so fanatic about something so obviously not in line with physical reality is a study in psychology.


Uh, no offense to the Gold Standard Paulians.

I hope the anti-Civil Rights Act Paulinistas on the other hand are deeply offended as I share JKWD's ******** off feelings.

 

I'll entertain this question because it's the most reasonable approach of the last umpteen pages. Congrats MITH.

In your example, I can't imagine that the local diner grew the coffee beans themselves, dug a well for their own water, built the booths that the customers sit in, and glazed the porcelain for the coffee cup that the diner drank out of. Now, the owners of the coffee making business, the porcelain manufacturer, the upholstery maker, the cash register machine maker all have an interest in running their business. They may choose not to trade with entities that discriminate. There's very little doubt that those business are engaged in interstate commmerce. It is virtually impossible for them to check every transaction that happens. When the government regulates interstate commerce by saying that no business can discriminate on the basis of race, it promotes economic efficiency, as every interstate entity can take comfort in the fact that their product will not be used to create a racist sub-economy. One of the hallmarks of the Ollie's BBQ and Heart of Atlanta cases was the observation that it's virtually impossible for restaurants and hotels to guarantee complete intrastate commerce. I think the bottle of ketchup figured prominently in the Ollie's case.

There's a much more morally simple point that overwhelms this argument in that it's simply not right to discriminate against people, but if we have to go down this line, the rights of all of the trade partners should be taken into consideration in your hypothetical transaction. Milton Friedman wouldn't want it any other way.

Now, to be fair, I'm sure there are places in upper Appalachia where a wooden plank bench and a cash box are all that's used for the 10 local folk who dine there. We'll just have to separate the theoretical from the realistic. The feds can announce the policy and enforce it against those truly operating in interstate commerce, but there's a reduction to absurdity whereby you can find examples that are just not going to get on the radar screen. They're still morally reprehensible, but nothing's going to come of it as a practical matter.

 

Your definition is equally, and I would argue more, absurd. If the only question was whether the single transaction that occurred involved two people from the same state, then the only interstate commerce that would exist would be transportation and shipping. If I buy an automobile there are innumerable points at which my transaction impacts interstate commerce, but by your definition, the fact that I bought it from Hank Aaron BMW means that it has no impact on interstate commerce.

If the definition has to have two logical extremes, then the practical reality is that commerce is far closer to everything than nothing.

EDIT: Let's also bear in mind that the Civil Rights Act intentionally set limits on the size of organizations that are effected. For example, you have to have 15 or more employees to be subject to Title VII. One reason for that is the assumption that most entities with 15 plus will interact in interstate commerce, whereas it's possible those with fewer will not. You can disagree whether 15 or 50 is the right number but that jurisdictional limit resolves most practical concerns about the scale of the act, leaving only the fundamentalist Nothing is Interstate Commerce argument.

 

First of all, check my EDIT. Second, since you're the details guy , think about what standards you would apply to determine this and who would decide. In the Civil Rights Act cases, the courts said Congress has sweeping powers to regulate interstate commerce and if it rationally decides something is in commerce, then the courts should accept that judgment.

That's been pulled back slightly by the Rehnquist court, but the standard is still pretty much the same-- Congress decides. While I disagree with your hypothetical, who would make the decision? What's the difference between Hank Aaron BMW and Hank Aaron Car Emporium that sells new BMWs?

 

Billy Clinton would be proud of the answer


*** looks over the history of Clinton in Africa ***

Hey, speaking of racists.... and Clinton.....

 

Until you can prove this, it is just speculation. Just like my own.

I know that you are into law, and I can understand why you would feel that way, and I can also understand why black people in the south feel that way. But any scientist can tell you that perception is not reality, and can, at best, be correlated to reality. A huge non-related example is the placebo effect. People attribute a change in their condition to a specific medicine, for the sole reason that they improved their condition noticeable after taking it. In reality, there are hundreds, if not thousands of other variables that can be attributed to an improvement in condition, but since they are not perceived, they are not accredited by the patient.

In the case of the south, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of variables working interactively that improved the condition in the south. Among those:
- Increased publicity led the rest of the nation towards action from apathy.
- Dramatically increased social pressure from outside of the south, dramatically increased social pressure from blacks within the south, and increased (albeit moderate) social pressure from whites within the south. Yes...there were some southern whites that joined in with the movement.
- Economic pressure, from blacks domestically, and from all races interstate.
- A sense of accomplishment or victory in attaining federal legislation could have caused a perceived improvement, even though the net effect was increased violence and hatred. It is scientifically proven that an attained goal or accomplishment can affect the perception of any consequences of realizing that goal.

These are just some of the examples that come to my mind...things that I perceive. There are going to be hundreds more. In fact, legislation could be one of them. I am fully capable of accepting that legislation helped...but I am not taking it from face value or perception...which is why I won't accept it as proven right now, but merely a theory that needs to be understood better by better data.

There is, however, a perceived as well as proven reality to some of the negative effects of the legislation. A while back I read an archived news story about polling the perpetrators of crimes against blacks after the civil rights act, and among those that confessed guilt, legislation was a major cause. Unfortunately, you can only take that as hearsay because I don't have a link, nor do I remember the news company. Even at the level of hearsay, it is not an unreasonable assumption.

If you can prove that race relations (not racial discrimination) improved as a direct and scientifically proven effect of legislation, then I retract that statement. Until then, all the data that I have read points in the other direction.

I will never understand how the mind of a liberal works for this exact reason.

You would accept increased rape as a direct result of a specific type of punishment for rape, for the sole reason that rape is worthy of punishment. That is irrational...and by irrational, I mean the dictionary definition: Devoid of rational argument and dogmatic. That isn't even an argument at all...merely a statement of belief. Do you even understand the purpose of punishment?! I almost feel like I am reading the Old Testament here.

You are completely correct. I was a little misleading by explaining things the way I did initially. Almost all punishment laws create resentment, but my position is that the resentment created by the laws are bad if they increase the illegal behavior, and good if they deter the illegal behavior. In the case of Christian history, public executions increased the scale and intensity of protest behavior during the early reformation.

http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2007.00176.x?cookieSet=1

The study does not focus solely on immigration, although that was one of the focuses (and more relevant to our time period). Much of the data about integration comes from our history of forced integration and or rapid uncontrolled integration from immigration.

From the section titled Immigration and Diversity Foster Social Isolation
This logic (and the sort of evidence presented in Table 1) was an important part of the legal case that led the United States Supreme Court to require racial desegregation in the famous Brown v. Board of Education case in 1954. For progressives, the contact theory is alluring, but I think it is fair to say that most (though not all) empirical studies have tended instead to support the so-called ‘conflict theory’, which suggests that, for various reasons – but above all, contention over limited resources – diversity fosters out-group distrust and in-group solidarity.

 

Happy Kwanzaa.

 

http://www.freeliberal.com/blog/archives/003129.php

I was checking out traffic stats and links from another site where I write when this old New York Times article caught my eye. The article, which was published in 1987, was about Russell Means, who was Ron Paul's contender for the Libertarian Party nomination at the time.


Russell Means, who once led an American Indian group in armed rebellion at Wounded Knee, S.D., is now campaigning for the Libertarian Party's Presidential nomination.

Russell Means, who once led an American Indian group in armed rebellion at Wounded Knee, S.D., is now campaigning for the Libertarian Party's Presidential nomination.

 

My drivel is exactly the same point as MITH's, but I'm not surprised that you would mischaracterize it or me. I have stated multiple times that I think the Civil Rights Act was not unconstitutional, but it was unnecessary, especially Titles II and VII, which deal with private commerce. The simple fact that it used the commerce clause as its support is my main reason for opposition to it, for the reason that it further destroys what our FFs meant by regulating interstate commerce. I have no opposition to the other Titles, except for the fact that they use the Commerce clause as justification, instead of Equal Protection from the 14th amendment.

 

You don't even know what your point is.

I'm going to have to stop discussing the issue with MITH, as well. Even though there's room for reasonable minds to differ on the extent to which commerce is interstate commerce, the debate has to be informed to be interesting.


In the spirit of being uninformed, and in the spirit of moving on to actually talk about Ron Paul, I have a question about foreign aid to which I don't know the answer. The clear gist of Ron Paul's foreign policy in the transcript from Meet the Press was that we should not give a single dollar of foreign aid to anyone.

I wonder how that compares to the rest of the world. What kind of foreign aid do China, Russia, and European nations give? Does the U.S. receive any foreign aid?

I think Paul's view ventures into kookdom because Paul probably doesn't distinguish between humanitarian aid such as to tsunami victims versus other kinds of foreign aid. However, setting that extremist naivity aside for the moment, in what context does Paul's foreign aid policy stand? Anyone have any facts?

 

Yes, the US has received lots of Humanitarian aid. Don't know about the rest of the questions. Katrina alone brought almost a billion dollars worth of offers for foreign aid, but I think we turned down a bit.

 

Wait, so I'm supposed to buy that if government fiat demanded the enforcement of the provisions of the Civil Rights Act because of the Fourteenth Amendment, Paulosaurs would be fine with it, but since the Civil Rights Act uses interstate commerce, it must be opposed ferociously. After reading defenses of public businesses having the right to discriminate on racial, religious, or whatever grounds. Presumably that also includes housing, hospitals, and other "private" businesses.

In fact, to be consistent with the principles Paul advances, discrimination would be legal in any public office or service run by the state or local government. Go back and read the "We the People" Acts the bastard keeps suggesting. No, I'm not surprised that I, a dedicated Paulocaust denier, knows more about what Paul is actually about than his alleged supporters.

 

Don't be silly...if you are white, all you have to do is breath, and you are racist. Were just a bunch of racist air monopolizers.