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.

Reasonable men

If you watch the news, then you are no doubt familiar with the loony, hateful, radical new ideas coming out of the Tea Party movement -- strong rhetoric about the proper role of government and what the people should do when the government oversteps that role. Bill Whittle points out that these ideas are not at all new, and that they are the same ideas (with amazingly similar rhetoric) expressed by some wise and visionary men that I hold in the highest regard. They got pretty fired up over the Stamp Act, so I can only imagine what they would think if they were around today... Article

Mark Levin Speech - Follow-up

Sorry it has taken me so long to follow up on my previous post last week about my opportunity to hear Mark Levin speak at the Churchill Dinner in Washington, DC. It was so encouraging to spend an evening with like-minded people who care about our Constitution and want to see our country prosper as a free society instead of a socialist republic. There were probably around 350 people in attendance, and after a delicious dinner the Hillsdale College President Larry Arne spoke for about 30 minutes, followed by a 30 minute speech by Mark Levin. Pat Sajak, the host of Wheel of Fortune and the Vice-President of the Hillsdale College Board of Trustees, gave a hilarious toast to Winston Churchill to close the evening.

Both Arne and Levin gave great speeches, and the basic message of both was similar. There is a serious attack currently being launched against our Constitution and against the individual rights and freedoms guaranteed to us in the Constitution. This attack is being perpetrated by our president and by our Congress, as well as unelected judges. The essential fight is between liberty and tyranny, between constitutionalism and statism. It is a brazen attempt to transform our country from a constitutional republic into a socialist state. The real power in a constitutional republic rests with the civil society, which is made up of free individuals pursuing their God-given rights to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. Its constitutionally-limited government is the servant to the people, whose rights are guaranteed by their Creator. The real power in a socialist state rests with an all-powerful federal government, which takes most of people's money through taxation and then distributes it back to its citizen-slaves as it deems best. The people's rights are "guaranteed" by a government that provides cradle-to-grave entitlements and regulates their every activity, reducing them to virtual slavery and trampling on the Constitution. Our country, though founded as a constitutional republic, has been steadily moving toward socialism for many years, starting with Abraham Lincoln and accelerating in this direction under FDR. Obama and our current Congress are more brazen about their socialist/Marxist intentions and more determined to utterly subjugate the American people under the federal government's control than any of their predecessors. Their two biggest power grabs at the moment are health care "reform" and "climate change" regulation, both of which strike at the heart of individual liberty.

What our country needs -- desperately needs -- right now is for individual citizens to step forward and "take back" our country by electing representatives who treasure our constitutional freedoms. Levin and Arne seemed optimistic that this will happen in future elections. I wish I could say I am as optimistic as they are. When I look at our country I see generations of people who, thanks to our government-run schools, are ignorant about American history and traditions, ignorant of the Constitution and the Founders, and ignorant of the Bible and our Judeo-Christian heritage which provides a basis for the dignity and worth of the individual. I see a country populated with people who have already become dependent on the government and who demand equality of outcome rather than equality of opportunity. I see lazy citizens who think that they owe their country nothing and that their country owes them everything, including a good education, a good job, good health care, and a comfortable life. I see a population that largely seems to reject moral absolutes and deny even the possibility of truth, that views its own existence and the existence of the universe as a meaningless accident of nature, and that seems incapable even of logically deducing the consequences of ideas. Maybe I'm too harsh in my assessment, but how can such a citizenry take back our country? It is likely that in the short-term, people's economic misery will drive them to elect new representatives in 2010 or 2012, but for any lasting change to take place there must be a change in people's hearts, beliefs, and attitudes. I pray this will happen, but it will take a miracle.

Levin closed his speech (and his book) with a quote from a president who truly understood liberty, Ronald Reagan: "Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free."