Now it's "controversial" to make decisions about a business that you own?

Suppose, for just a moment, that General Motors makes a strange business agreement with Toyota. GM pays Toyota a large sum of money, and in exchange, GM controls the business decisions of Toyota. However, Toyota is still owned by the shareholders of Toyota. GM can now decide who Toyota may hire and what criteria may be used in Toyota's hiring decisions. GM gets to decide how much money its executives may earn. GM also has the right to fix any cases of "discriminatory underrepresentation" of minorities in management positions. GM has the power to set minimum wages at Toyota (even though some candidates for jobs may be willing to work for less) and to mandate that Toyota pay a higher wage to employees who work more than 40 hours in a week.


With all the power that GM has over Toyota, you might argue that GM actually owns Toyota, even though the original agreement says otherwise. Now, substitute "the US government" for "GM" and "privately-owned American businesses" for "Toyota", and you get the situation faced by businesses in the US today.*


US Senate candidate Rand Paul from Kentucky made a similar argument on The Rachel Maddow Show on May 19. (Video and transcript here.) On this show, Maddow asked Paul to clarify some of his previous statements regarding the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964. Paul has criticized parts of the 1964 act which place mandates on private businesses, while praising the other sections which place restrictions only on public institutions. Paul framed his argument in terms of personal liberty and property rights. In a nutshell, the owners of private businesses should be free to use their property as they see fit, as this is the essence of ownership.

MADDOW: Do you think that a private business has the right to say we don't serve black people?

PAUL: Yes. I'm not in favor of any discrimination of any form. I would never belong to any club that excluded anybody for race. We still do have private clubs in America that can discriminate based on race. But I think what's important about this debate is not written into any specific "gotcha" on this, but asking the question: what about freedom of speech? Should we limit speech from people we find abhorrent? Should we limit racists from speaking? I don't want to be associated with those people, but I also don't want to limit their speech in any way in the sense that we tolerate boorish and uncivilized behavior because that's one of the things freedom requires is that we allow people to be boorish and uncivilized, but that doesn't mean we approve of it. I think the problem with this debate is by getting muddled down into it, the implication is somehow that I would approve of any racism or discrimination, and I don't in any form or fashion.

I love this answer. I also find racism aborrhent, and I choose not to associate myself with racists. However, freedom includes the right to be an offensive jerk. And everyone is an offensive jerk in somebody's eyes. Paul gave kind of a long and roundabout answer, but he's a politician. If he had not gone to great lengths to explain himself, then his ideas would be distorted by the press even more than they have already.

Maddow's reply to Paul is just plain silly.

MADDOW: But isn't being in favor of civil rights but against the Civil Rights Act a little like saying you're against high cholesterol but you're in favor of fried cheese?**

This is a logical fallacy that many people fall for. (Or maybe they know better, but they just try to score political points by using it.) It is only inconsistent to support civil rights while opposing parts of the Civil Rights Act if those parts actually deal with civil rights. For the record, I am strongly in favor of fried cheese.


*All right, the analogy breaks down at a few points. For one, the federal government does not pay privately-owned businesses for their rights. It just takes their rights by force.

**Wait a second. This argument sounds ... somehow ... familiar for some reason -- almost as if I have heard it before. You know...being personally opposed to something but wanting it to remain legal. Where have I heard this? Maybe I'm confused. Yeah, probably.