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Do You Agree with John Stossel?

Should the public accommodations portion of the law be repealed?


  • Total voters
    96
To the general welfare clause of course. It's the next logical place to jump when all else fails.
Have much trouble with reading comprehension? Or do you just not understand the phrase "From where"?
 
No it doesn't. Just because I CAN use my car as a taxi doesn't mean I can slap a taxi sign on top and start carrying passengers for a fee. There are certain qualifications I have to meet first.

From whence do you (or others) acquire the legitimate authority over others that allows you to tell them what they may do with their car?
 
Curiously the government has shown a particularly interest in taxing those businesses and corporations as if they were a person.

They've allowed them to be sued. They've allowed their assets to be seized. They've allowed them to be taxed, Theyve allowed them to be legislated against. And they have conspicuously and vociferously targeted those businesses. Evidently government believes those businesses should be nothing more than silent sheep for the slaughter.

Unfortunately all that targeting of those business has led to the necessity to treat them as human beings, with their own right to defend themselves, to protect their assets, and to represent their perspective in the political arena, and that of the mom and pop investors that actually own those businesses.
Oh, yes, the poor little rich boys. :lamo


I can't tell if you honestly believe that line of garbage or not. If you do I feel pity that you're so myopic in your views.
 
From whence do you (or others) acquire the legitimate authority over others that allows you to tell them what they may do with their car?
It's a simple matter of public safety.


We've had our discussion of this subject (Stossel) and, honestly, I'm tired of you airing your boring and predictable anarchistic (or minarchistic if you prefer) views using me as a sounding board, so I won't go down this road any further with you.
 
The Constitution says nothing about equal treatment on other peoples private property when it comes to getting service or gaining access. Try again.

If its open to the public, its not wholly private. That is the situation agreed to by citizens.
 
It's a simple matter of public safety.


We've had our discussion of this subject (Stossel) and, honestly, I'm tired of you airing your boring and predictable anarchistic (or minarchistic if you prefer) views using me as a sounding board, so I won't go down this road any further with you.

I see. So you tell us that a person may not use his own car as he wishes, but you're not interested in explaining from where this authority over others originates.
 
The Constitution prohibits government from treating people differently regarding their race, sex, or religion. It has nothing to do with property owners. The equal protection clause of the 14th amendment, for example, deals with equal protection of the laws.

Businesses operate under laws.
 
yes... after the civil war the USSC stated that the states have to follow the bill or rights.

but constitutional law/bill or rights is supreme law, federal/ state laws /regulations ........do not override the bill of rights..unless crimes/health safety are involved.

my rights are not contingent on whether or not you think i am a moral person (discrimination), now if i am committing a crime, or doing something which could cause a health or safety issue to the people, government can act on my rights.



were is it at?, discrimination is a moral issue, and government has no moral responsibility concerning the life's of the people, if they did, they could tell you what to eat, drink, smoke, who you could have sex with , how much money you need to save, how you must talk to other people.....and they dont have that power.

the constitution is clear, and that no person can be put into servitude towards another, unless a crime has been committed, and discrimination is not a crime, its a statutory law, created by government to force us to behave in a social manner.

your argument is based on what the government has created, but they have no powers in their 18 duties to create such laws, constitutions are not written to limit people or businesses, ..but only to limit governments.

The do have those powers. We gave it to them. To ensure justice, equal treatment, and regulate commerce.
 
I see. So you tell us that a person may not use his own car as he wishes, but you're not interested in explaining from where this authority over others originates.
I could explain what I believe but you'd just sound off with your usual anarchist campaign, again, so why bother? We already know we disagree and we've already resolved our issues inRe the question of this thread. Nothing left to discuss.
 
I could explain what I believe but you'd just sound off with your usual anarchist campaign, again, so why bother? We already know we disagree and we've already resolved our issues inRe the question of this thread. Nothing left to discuss.

Good response. Fair enough.
 
From whence do you (or others) acquire the legitimate authority over others that allows you to tell them what they may do with their car?
Yes. I agree that, in general others don't have the authority to tell someone what they can do with their car on their property. (Except for example, if my neighbor generating a huge amount of dust running his car on his property.) Of course, public roads are another issue.
 
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The do have those powers. We gave it to them. To ensure justice, equal treatment, and regulate commerce.

no.... read the 14th amendment.....its says the governments are to dispense equal treatment of law and not discriminate.

the constitution, does not limit the people or business.....


14th .....All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.


"article 1 section 8...To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes"

james madison on commerce:

Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3 (Commerce)
James Madison, Federalist, no. 42, 283--85
22 Jan. 1788

"....The defect of power in the existing confederacy (articles of confederation) , to regulate the commerce between its several members, (between the states) is in the number of those which have been clearly pointed out by experience"

Madison is saying under the articles there is a defect of commerce, ...because the states are involved in trade wars among themselves, bringing commerce to a stand still.

the federal government was never given under the constitution power to regulate inside the states.
 
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You actually LISTEN to political rhetoric?!? :lamo

its very clear, that these laws were made to bring up the social scale.... minorities.

in fact today the USSC , sent back to Texas a case of discrimination based on affirmative action, where the state admits it discriminated, ........as they put it ...." for the greater good"
 
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Sorry, the Declaration does not contain the word "property". Try again.

here try this:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

DOI......life liberty, and the pursuit of happiness <--------translates into property

constitution------->.....life liberty or property
 
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no.... read the 14th amendment.....its says the governments are to dispense equal treatment of law and not discriminate.

the constitution, does not limit the people or business.....


14th .....All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.


"article 1 section 8...To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes"

james madison on commerce:

Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3 (Commerce)
James Madison, Federalist, no. 42, 283--85
22 Jan. 1788

"....The defect of power in the existing confederacy (articles of confederation) , to regulate the commerce between its several members, (between the states) is in the number of those which have been clearly pointed out by experience"

Madison is saying under the articles there is a defect of commerce, ...because the states are involved in trade wars among themselves, bringing commerce to a stand still.

the federal government was never given under the constitution power to regulate inside the states.

Agree to disagree. I personally dont want to live in a country that encourages businesses to racially discriminate. If you do, and those you are discriminating dont care, then have at it.
 
More leaning on law when your logic falls apart. Predictable.

?????? The law is part of my logic. So, yeah, it would be predictable that I mention it. :doh
 
Agree to disagree. I personally dont want to live in a country that encourages businesses to racially discriminate. If you do, and those you are discriminating dont care, then have at it.

no one is encouraging discrimination.

but the supreme law is the supreme law, and the rights of the people ...are the rights of the people..not governments

what your wanting to happen is, when you see in your mind what you think is wrong, you want it fixed to your satisfaction, how you want it, and you dont get to make that decision, becuase its not in your hands, or governments..in this situation.

becuase government are instituted to protect the rights of the people.

no citizen of the u.s. can violate the u.s. constitution, becuase it is not written to limited the people. you as a citizen, by restricting someone speech or worship or them being secure in there person is a criminal act, covered by criminal law.

being discriminated against is not a crime, (criminal law) against someone.....its a statutory law.

and the constitution is clear no one can be made to serve another unless a crime has been committed.
 
Read the following:

Joel Williamson- The Separation of the Races

Edward L. Ayers- The Promise of the New South: Life after Reconstruction

Leon F. Litwack- Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow

Howard N. Rabinowitz-From Exclusion to Segregation: Southern Race Relations, 1865-1890

Do you have any direct quotes?

What I am stating is that social and economic segregation post-war was a serious prelude to legal segregation of the two races.

Legal segregation was already in place pre-war. I do believe there was social/economic segregation during the early colonial period I mentioned, but minorities had a lot more freedom before the colonies established many of the laws.
 
I ran an identical poll almost three years ago, since DP has added a significant number of users I thought I would try it again.

In May 2010 Rand Paul announced his candidacy for U.S. Senate from Kentucky on MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show. On the show he got into some trouble because he said he wouldn't support the "public accommodations" portion of the Civil Right Act of 1964.

That led up to this confrontation with Megyn Kelly on Fox where he said he favors repeal of that part of the law.

Should the public accommodations portion of the law be repealed?

Yes
No
I don't Know

I voted yes. It's their privately owned business they should be able to restrict access to it to whomever they want to. There may have been a reason to step on that right a little bit in the past (I don't know) but now I don't see it. Besides why would you want to do business with someone who holds an irrational grudge against you? Better to bring them out in the open, see who they're discriminating against and then have a better vantage point on who to avoid doing business with. If I knew someone was discriminating against others for some stupid reason then I would actively keep my distance and money away from them.
 
Do you have any direct quotes?

I'd prefer it if you picked up the copies, but eh, I'll break off from what I should be doing and type some sections up for you.

John David Smith: Roger A. Fisher was right in 1969 when he argued that historians should adopt 'an evolutionary concept of segregation in the South.' Though its modern form unfolded late-in the 1890s South-the history of segregation actually ranges over the entire course and geography of American history. The key element in sorting out segregation's history is differentiating between segregation by custom, habit, or practice (de facto segregation) and segregation by specific law (de jure segregation). Historians have frequently erred by focusing too narrowly-on de jure segregation only-thereby missing long-standing patterns of informed racial separation that have stained the fabric of interracial contact throughout American history.

Despite their disagreements, historians generally concur that Jim Crow became formalized in the 1890s, when one southern state after another passed a patchwork of interrelated laws codifying blacks' customary second-class legal and social status. Following a pattern that emerged in the 1870s and 1880s when the federal courts failed to enforce the Reconstruction amendments, in 1896 the U.S. Supreme Court added its imprimatur to Jim Crow in the flawed Plessy v. Ferguson case, upholding 'separate-but-equal' facilities on public conveyances. This was applied to other public facilities, including schools. The segregation system, an American apartheid, thus was in place in the South before World War I and divided much of the region into separate and unequal black and white worlds.

Joel Williamson: "Separation, had, of course, marked the Negro in slavery; yet the very nature of slavery necessitated a constant, physical intimacy between the races. In the peculiar institution, the white man had constantly and closely to oversee the labor of the Negro, preserve order in domestic arrangements within the slave quarters, and minister to the physical, medical, and moral needs of his laborers. In brief, slavery enforced its own special brand of interracial associations; in in a sense it married the interests of white to black at birth and the union followed both to the grave."

"During the spring and summer of 1865, as the centripetal force of slavery melted rapidly away, each race clearly tended to disassociate itself from the other. The trend was evident in every phase of human endeavor: agriculture, business, occupations, schools and churches, in every aspect of social intercourse and politics. As early as July 1865, a Bostonian in Charleston reported that 'the worst sign here...is the growth of a bitter and hostile spirit between blacks and whites-a gap opening between the races which, it would seem may at some time result seriously.' Well before the end of Reconstruction, separation had crystallized into a comprehensive pattern which, in its essence, remained unaltered until the middle of the twentieth century."

Edward Ayers: "In a quest to channel the relations between the races, white Southerners enacted one law after another to proscribe contact among blacks and whites. Some things about the relations between the races had been established quickly after emancipation. Schools, poor houses, orphanages, and hospitals, founded to help people who had once been slaves, were usually separated by race at their inception. Cities segregated cemeteries and parks, counties segregated court houses. Churches quickly broke into different congregations for blacks and whites. Hotels served one race only; blacks could see plays only from the balcony or separate seats; restraurants served one race or served them in different rooms or from separate windows. In 1885, a Memphis newspaper described how thoroughly the races were separated: "The colored people make no effort to obtrude themselves upon the whites in the public schools, their churches, their fairs, their Sunday-schools, their picnics, their social parties, hotels or banquets. They prefer their own preachers, teachers, their schools, picnics, hotels and social gatherings." In the countryside as well as in town, blacks and whites associated with members of their own race except in those situations when interracial association could not be avoided: work, commerce, politics, travel.

[...]

"Most of the debates about race relations focused on the railroads of the New South. While some blacks resisted their exclusion from white-owned hotels and restaurants, they could usually find, and often preferred, accommodations in black-run businesses. Travel was a different story, for members of both races had no choice but to use the same railroads. As the number of railroads proliferated in the 1880s, as the number of stations quickly mounted, as dozens of counties got on a line for the first time, as previously isolated areas found themselves connected to towns and cities with different kinds of black people and different kids of race relations, segregation became a matter of statewide attention. Prior to the eighties, localities could strike their own compromises in race relations, try their own experiments, tolerate their own ambiguities. Tough decisions forced themselves on the state legislatures of the South after the railroads came. The result was the first wave of segregation laws that affected virtually the entire South in anything like a uniform way, as nine Southern states enacted railroad segregation laws in the years between 1887 and 1891.

[....]

This sort of clash was hardly confined to fiction. Andrew Springs, a young black man on the way from North Carolina to Fisk University in Nashville in 1891, told a friend back home about his experiences. "I came very near being locked up by the police at Chattanooga. I wanted some water. I went in to the White Waiting [room] and got it as they didn't have any for Cuffy to drink. Just time I got the water here come the police just like I were killing some one and said You get out of here you black rascal put that cup down. I got a notion to knock your head off." As so often happened, the black man refused to accept such treatment without protest. "I told him I were no rascal neither were I black. I were very near as white as he was. Great Scott he started for me....He didn't strike tho, but had me started to the lock up." Springs, like many blacks harassed on the railroad, used the law to stop his persecution. "I told him I had my ticket and it was the duty of R.R. Co. to furnish water for both white [and] black." The officer let him go. The young man then took the dangerous, and atypical, step of threatening the officer: "I told him if I ever catch him in North Carolina I would fix him."

Leon Litwack "Racial segregation was hardly a new phenomenon. Before the Civil War, when slavery had fixed the status of most blacks, no need was felt for statutory measures segregating the races. The restrictive Black Codes, along with the few segregation laws passed by the first postwar governments, did not survive Reconstruction. What replaced them, however was not racial integration but an informal code of exclusion and discrimination. Even the Radical legislatures in which blacks played a prominent role made no concerted effort to force integration on unwilling and resisting whites, especially in the public schools; constitutional or legislative provisions mandating integration were almost impossible to enforce. The determination of blacks to improve their position during and after Reconstruction revolved largely around efforts to secure accommodations that equaled those afforded whites. Custom, habit, and etiquette, then, defined the social relations between the races and enforced separation in many areas of southern life. Whatever the Negro's legal rights, an English traveler noted in Richmond in 1866, he knows "how far he may go, and where he must stop" and that "habits are not changed by paper laws."

But in the 1890s whites perceived in the behavior of "uppity" (and invariably younger) blacks a growing threat or indifference to the prevailing customs, habits, and etiquette. Over the next two decades, white Southerners would construct in response an imposing and extensive system of legal mechanisms designed to institutionalize the already familiar and customary subordination of black men and women. Between 1890 and 1915, state after state wrote the prevailing racial customs and habits into statute books. Jim Crow came to the South in an expanded and more rigid form, partly in response to fears of a new generation of blacks unschooled in racial etiquette and to growing doubts that this generation could be trusted to stay in its place without legal force. If the old Negro knew his 'place,' the New Negro evidently did not. "The white people began to begrudge these niggers their running around and doing just as they chose,' recalled Sam Gadsden, a black South Carolinian born in 1882. "That's all there is to segregation, that caused the whole thing. The white people couldn't master these niggers any more so they took up the task of intimidating them."

Howard N. Rabinowitz "Although George Tindall had in part anticipated Woodward's arguments, it is the "Woodward thesis" over which historians have chosen sides. Charles E. Wynes, Frenise A. Logan, and Henry C. Dethloff and Robert P. Jones explicitly declare their support for Woodward (even though much of their evidence seems to point in the opposite direction); and the same is true of the more recent implicit endorsements by John W. Blassingame and Dale A. Somers. In his study of South Carolina blacks, however, Joel Williamson, unlike Woodward, emphasizes customs rather than laws and sees segregation so entrenched in the state by the end of Reconstruction that he refers to the early appearance of a "duochromatic order." Vernon Lane Wharton's account of Mississippi blacks reaches a similar conclusion, and it has been used to support the arguments of Woodward's critics. Richard C. Wade's work on slavery in antebellum southern cities, Roger A. Fischer's studies of antebellum and postbellum New Orleans, and Ira Berlin's treatment of antebellum free Negroes also question Woodward's conclusions.

The debate has been fruitful, shedding light on race relations in the postbellum South. But the emphasis on the alternatives of segregation or integration has obscured the obvious 'forgotten alternative'-exlcusion. The issue is not merely when segregation first appeared, but what it replaced. Before the Civil War, blacks were excluded from militia companies and schools, as well as most hospitals, asylums, and public accommodations. The first postwar governments during Presidential Reconstruction generally sought to continue the antebellum policy of exclusion. Nevertheless, by 1890-before the resort to widespread de jure segregation-de facto segregation had replaced exclusion as the norm in southern race relations. In the process the integration stage had been largely bypassed. This shift occurred because of the efforts of white Republicans who initiated it, blacks who supported and at times requested it, and Redeemers who accepted and expanded the new policy once they came to power."
 
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As does everyone else. Your point?

Laws which are required to apply to everyone equally. So if a city law requires that a business be open to the public, that means everyone. Its pretty simple.
 
You're the one that brought up "extended rights"

Life
Liberty
Estate(property)

All rights begin with the sovereignty over one's own body and life is the origin of all inalienable rights and the basis of the three pillars of rights. With ownership over yourself you're the sole arbiter of your body and your life and of course this means and implies the authority to control your destiny. Whatever property you have ownership over works on this same principle be it your home, your business, or and even small things like your toothbrush. This means that there is no doubt that owner of property does in fact have the right to start a business.

Nonsense. It's talk like that that pushes other Libertarian beliefs into the cold.

Ownership pushes libertarian beliefs into the cold? How sad.
 
?????? The law is part of my logic. So, yeah, it would be predictable that I mention it. :doh

The law is pretty much your entire argument.
 
If its open to the public, its not wholly private. That is the situation agreed to by citizens.

Who you decide to business with is your decision as the sole arbiter over your property and labor and no can make you do otherwise without violating your rights. This is not up to society as society itself does not have anything to do with the matter.
 
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