Posted on 12/22/2002 1:01:33 PM PST by Bad Eagle
Of course there is no reason to find alternatives to voluntary integration. Free peoples living where they wish doesn't NEED an alternative, it is the desired end-result. The sticky problems come in when pockets of people decide they want to exclude certain peoples for whatever reasons. Ownership rights explicitly contain the right to exclude others from the use and enjoyment of that property (land or otherwise). It seems odd to me that the federal government has decided which exclusions are acceptable and which are not. It also offends my Freedom-loving mind to think about how this power can extend to any preferential decision.
I hope that makes my view a little clearer... especially since my stance is less-than-PC. We non-Lefties have to be really careful when we do that. (*cough* Lott!! *cough*)
Then you believe wrong and need to bone up on the issues. Of course your response could be an intentional attempt to impune my character as racist, thereby marginalizing my opinion. If the latter is the case then there is no chance of reasoned discussion with you and this is my last reponse to you. However, if your statement is made due to a lack of knowledge of the issues at hand than I will attempt to educate you and you should read on. Your response to this post will be quite illuminating and will also serve to demonstrate to observers not only your motivations, but the constitutional soundness of my position.
Slavery was justified by the view that blacks were inferior to whites and therefore the Constitution did not apply to them. I do not subscribe to that belief. I do, however, subscribe to a strict interpretation of the Constitution, and my argument in that post is purely based on the First Amendment, which on it's face stands for the proposition that each of us has the right to discriminate in our personal lives free from Government interference:
Congress shall make no law...or abridging...the right of the people peaceably to assemble...
Of course our personal choices will have repercussions, based upon the reaction of other individuals to our choices. However, the reactions to our choices should also be free from a government mandated list of responses.
For you to attempt to impune my character as racist is reprehensible. If your post was the product of a very vulgar understanding of the issues at hand hopefully I have enlightened you.
I'm just an average guy with an opinion, that's all.
I'm enjoying your discussion and am trying to remember those cases....any help with a synopsis?
Good luck on your finals BTW.
In this second landmark case, the United States Supreme Court went far beyond the decision in Shelley v Kraemer which had limited only the state's enforcement of restrictive covenants. In Jones v Mayer, the Supreme Court determined that the Mayer Company, developers of a private subdivision in St. Louis could not deny the Jones family the opportunity to purchase a home based solely on Mr. Jone's race. Justice Stevens decision for the Supreme Court held that the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Thirteenth Amendment include "the freedom to buy whatever a white man can buy, the right to live wherever a white man can live. If Congress cannot say that being a free man means at least this much, then the Thirteenth Amendment made a promise the Nation cannot keep."
A more detailed review can be found here
And after reading the review you linked it is clear to me that the First Amendment is dead in many ways.
To tell me that there is a government-approved list of reaons for refusing a purchaser for my home is not what the Founders envisioned when they penned the Constitution...
Shelley v Kraemer?
"Whether the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment inhibits judicial enforcement by state courts of restrictive covenants based on race or color is a question which this Court has not heretofore been called upon to consider."
To tell me that there is a government-approved list of reaons for refusing a purchaser for my home is not what the Founders envisioned when they penned the Constitution...
The federal government says that you cannot refuse to sell your home to someone, if the basis of your decision is race, family size, religion, or age... interestingly enough, sexual orientation isn't on the list... yet. (Keep in mind that this is a first semster Property Law class... I'm quite sure that many of the finer details are missing, and there should be plenty of FR experts to correct me wherever I go wrong.) Our class discussions also ranged around to include Lester Maddox, which is why I added in all other types of property. That's also why I brought up the idea that the Lester Maddoxes of the world are being forced to involuntarily serve those that they do not wish to, in direct violation of the 13th Amendment. If some idiot wants to lose business, that's his concern. There are plenty of other stores out there that will be DELIGHTED to take up the slack. (I also wonder why someone would want to frequent a shop, most especially an eatery, where the owner does not want their business. There are enough fast food horror stories to make me inspect my lunch twice before eating it!)
If some idiot wants to lose business, that's his concern. There are plenty of other stores out there that will be DELIGHTED to take up the slack. (I also wonder why someone would want to frequent a shop, most especially an eatery, where the owner does not want their business. There are enough fast food horror stories to make me inspect my lunch twice before eating it!)
Well of course you are correct...but now you have outed yourself as a cracker racist....
(to the PC folks at SPLC and the rest of the liberals...)
Oh, come on. My wife is French, Spanish, Apache, Yaqui and Maya. Any problems she has comes not from racial issues but from being brought up in a abusive home. If you love and nuture your kids, they can overcome any bigotry they might encounter from the outside world - because kids will ALWAYS come up with something to abuse another kid with. If it isn't race, it'll be their name, or their teeth, or their clothes, or that they're smart...
I've admired many of your essays in the past. But this one, quite frankly, leaves me slackjawed. How were Indians segregated? At the point of a bayonet - and after Indians were forced on to marginal reservations and forced to try farming on land terribly unsuited for such, every effort was subsequently made by the American government to obliterate Indian culture, including Indian schools that ripped children from their homes, cut their hair and forbade them to speak their native langauge - my wife gets shivers whenever we drive past the graveyard of Indian children in Carlisle, PA, near where we live - the one acknowledgement of their tribal identity is inscribed on the small tombstones. Likewise, blacks were kept segregated by the raw force of governmental power, and that is what Strom was running for in 1948 - for states to continue that. I cannot see how you can possibly support the South wishing to continue to do to blacks what was done to your ancestors, only worse - the unmoral application of power and force to deprive your ancestors of their fundamental rights as human beings.
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