Posted on 6/1/2006, 7:19:55 PM by voletti
People are willing to be tolerant, but only to a certain point. And from California to the Midwest and Florida, signs of exclusionary thinking are popping up all over.
Has it become okay to exclude again?
Perhaps one of the most treasured of American rights is the freedom of association. This is the right to hang out with whomever we want, wherever we want. It's a complicated right, because when we hang out with "people like us," inevitably someone gets kept out. Where and how to draw the line is a question we all seem to be struggling with right now.
Black Jack, Mo., made national headlines late last month when it drew its firm line. An unmarried couple with three children tried to move into the house they had just bought. The house is zoned for single family residences—and the city decided this family does not fit their legal definition of family. The city intends to evict. When this news broke, many assumed Black Jack must be one of those white, religious conservative towns in the Bible Belt. But Black Jack turned out to be a suburb of St. Louis, and it’s 70% African American. Their enforcement of the zoning is a genuine desire to preserve the pro-family environment.
My friends in liberal Manhattan were appalled. "It could never happen here," they insisted. But it is happening there—at the corner of 70th and Broadway. The Sherman Square condominium tower rejected the application of an unmarried couple. (No, the couple is not gay.) The co-op says it isn't a moral judgment. It feels it shouldn’t be forced into a legal contract with two people who are not even willing to be legally bound to each other. Isn't that reasonable?
(Excerpt) Read more at time.com ...
yes
People are just plain sick and tired of other people foisting off their political "diversity" or "correctness" just to get their way. There are people that just like to shake up status quo in the name of "diversity" or "correctness" and bulldoze their views on others. People are beginning to say "forget it bozo, go somewhere else."
birds of a feather....
No secret that liberalism run rampant destroys family , trust, loyalty and all those values we hold dear. About time the pi$$ant libs learn that the backlash has begun....
You should ping someone when you talk about them...(snicker, snort, that was humor, like the funny kind, only different.)
Po Johnson sounds like a racist bigot to me?
I support Civil Rights. I think it was a real shame that racist lunch counter owners refused to serve blacks in the 1950's. I truly do.
However, when the US determined that lunch counter owners could not legally refuse to serve some people, that ruling trampled on the property rights of the lunch counter owners. A lot of harm has come from that sort of ruling.
A smart businessman will serve anyone who wants to buy his wares. The Free Market would ensure that all citizens had access to lunch counters. We created a society in which exclusion was not permitted, and I consider THAT to be a human rights violation. I hope the pendulum is swinging back and allowing people to truly make their own choice and control their own property.
Where it comes to business, any smart businessman knows that the color of everybody's money is the same!
"People are just plain sick and tired of other people foisting off their political "diversity" or "correctness" just to get their way."
Some of us seem to have forgotten that freedom isn't always pretty. It's not illegal to be racist. It's not nice, and not wise, but not illegal. Freedom is being allowed to like or dislike people and things for whatever reason you choose. Let people make their own choices!
A right to associate also implies a right to disassociate. Reasonable people will usually be tolerant in moderation. But forced diversity will cause a backlash. This is what we are seeing now.
From the article: "These anecdotes make us liberals uncomfortable, but isn't congregating with like-minded people a natural impulse?"
Yes, it is. It is part of the survival instinct.
"Where and how to draw the line is a question we all seem to be struggling with right now."
I doubt if "we all" includes a lot of freepers.....nice of the author to think of us, though....
The Supreme Court torpedoed the "right to free association" years ago.
"We created a society in which exclusion was not permitted, and I consider THAT to be a human rights violation."
I couldn't agree more. You nailed it. If that lunch counter owner continues to serve who he wishes, and he excludes, evenutally, people won't go there... most people anyway, and his business will fail.
Why is that so hard for leftists to understand?
Hence, they are now forced to deal with impossible contradictions in thought process, and they can't deal with it.
That’s the problem in a nutshell. But I really don’t see it as a right to free association.
I own a house. I worked hard, I saved money, I shouldered a large mortgage, and now I am a homeowner.
You cannot come over to my house and swim in my pool any time you like. You are not an acquaintance of mine. I don’t know you. I didn’t invite you. Don’t jump in my pool. That would be trespassing.
I think everybody would agree that this is blatantly obvious.
I also own a restaurant. I worked hard, I saved money, I shouldered a large mortgage, and now I own a restaurant.
I don’t like certain people. I don’t want them in my restaurant. They are not personal acquaintances on mine. I didn’t invite them. In fact, I wish to specifically dis-invite them. Don’t come to my restaurant. I will consider it trespassing.
Is that a dumb business decision? Yeah. It is. If I actually owned a restaurant (I don’t) I imagine that such stupid, exclusionary thinking on my part would seriously undermine my profitability.
But the point is: If I can exclude you from my home, why can’t I exclude you from my business? The courts have the answer: I think the term in “public accommodation”.
My point is: The court’s answer causes problems. It tramples property rights and was not a good decision.
If they could accomplish that, then they could do whatever they wanted and they would have the legal right to make us pay for making them feel guilty about whatever they were doing. Some Christians bought into that, which is why we are where we are today.
I've been called lotsa dirty names, but never a lib. That hurts. LOL
There are people that just like to shake up status quo in the name of "diversity" or "correctness" and bulldoze their views on others.
The radical individualism so prevalent recently seems determined to destroy any institutions free people build among themselves. Compare atoms building molecules. If molecules were destroyed for the sake of an atom that can't be part of it, we would never have molecules and hence nothing that is made of molucules. It would be one vast cloud of nothingness (a bit of an oxymoron I know).
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