So... how about that Tea Party?

[HappySqurriel]

SciFiBoy said:

HappySqurriel said:

SciFiBoy said:

HappySqurriel said:

(As usual) there seems to be a lack of understanding of libertarianism. In general libertarians tends to separate what they believe is right and what they thing the government should encourage or enforce; and you could say that a libertarian truly believes that the government should not be involved in legislating morality. It would be a fairly consistent position for a libertarian to be entirely opposed to something (say racism or forced racial segregation) and yet believe that the government has no right to force people to behave any differently than they are.

hmm, then how could they justify any sort of military or legal system?

military - would be forcing OTHER people to behave differently (not invade, kill, et al)

legal - forcing people NOT to commit crimes

?

Libertarianism is not the belief in anarchy, and most libertarians still believe that there are certain rights of an individual that need to be protected (justifying a legal system) and that everyone has a responsibility to collectively protect their nation (justifying a military). Saying that someone should be arrested for stealing (undermining someone’s right to property ownership) or for murdering someone (undermining someone’s right to live) is quite a bit different from arresting someone for saying something that hurts someone’s feelings.

Racism and Segregation are considerably worse than "hurting someones feelings", its that kind of callous attitude that allowed both to flourish for so long in human societies...

Systemically forced segregation is wrong, but so is systemically forced integration ...

To use a non-racial example, saying that women must use separate fitness facilities as men is just as wrong as saying that women must use the same fitness facilities as men; and there is nothing wrong with a chain of fitness facilities existing that exclusively caters to the needs of women, while having other facilities that choose to target both men and women. The only time anyone ever questions this is when someone would choose to make a gym that exclusively caters to men; and depending on the reason for this segregation people would have varying levels of disapproval, for example segregating because you wanted to focus on the specific approaches that work best for men would result in far less disapproval than segregating because you thought women should be doing more womanly things.

Now, for legislation to be fair it has to treat all groups equally; and therefore legislation to eliminate segregation and to force integration also eliminates reasonable segregation. To put this in the context of my gender based example, this means that Curves and Spa-Lady (and any women only gym, or any gym with a women’s only area) would be forced to allow men to join their gym.

 

This isn’t to say that a libertarian would approve of all cases of segregation; but that they would tend to see the appropriate way to deal with this segregation was to put social pressure on a business to integrate, or to boycott the business on principle, not to legislate against it. By dealing with it socially rather than legally it allows it to be dealt with on a case by case basis, and for the status to reflect the prevailing views of the community. If (for example) the Ginger Club of America formed and denied access to people of various visible minorities because they were not "Ginger" society on the whole can decide whether that is an appropriate discriminatory policy far better than the legal system can.

 

Does that mean that a gym doesn’t have the right to segregate based on gender, and as a man I have the right to demand that Spa Lady gives me access to their facilities?