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Title: The Libertarian Case FOR Serving Sarah Huckabee Sanders (and Other People You Disagree With)
Source:
Reason
URL Source: [None]
Published: Jun 26, 2018
Author: Nick Gillespie
Post Date: 2018-06-26 05:43:59 by Deckard
Keywords: None
Views: 660
Comments: 30
My colleague Robby Soave has already published a libertarian defense of refusing to serve White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Over the weekend, Sanders and her party were bounced from the Red Hen, a restaurant in Virginia. The restaurant's owner said "this feels like the moment in our democracy when people have to make uncomfortable actions and decisions to uphold their morals." Well, sure, knock yourself out. The doctrinaire libertarian defense of the owner is pretty straightforward: A business owner should have the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason, good, bad, and stupid. (Note: Such a position is not the law of the land due to various antidiscrimination laws). Just as an anti-gay cake baker should be able to pass on making a wedding cake, or a racist can refuse service because she doesn't like the skin color of a potential customer, the Red Hen's owner should be able to kick out this or that customer just because. Those arguments make sense, I guess. But I think the decision to withhold service is usually illiberal and damaging to civil discourse, which, like property rights, is also something we should value as libertarians. Unlike many of my Reason colleagues, I don't get too bothered with laws that mandate equal treatment under the law at businesses that are open to the public. If you want to be a private club so you can discriminate for x or y reason, go right ahead. But there is a social value in saying that businesses that claim to be open to the public will not be allowed to exclude individuals or groups unless they are being specifically disruptive. It's one thing to kick out a rowdy party of women at a restaurant. It's another to refuse to serve women at all. Libertarians are quick to point out that capitalism works to break down prejudice and bias precisely because everyone's money is green. The profit motive can trump tribal, political, or ideological prejudices. Once a racist, a homophobe, or a NeverTrumper starts working side by side with or serving the object of their scorn, it's quite possible that meaningful conversation will take place. Who knows, people may even find common ground and start building out from that toward a better, more-inclusive society? There are also questions of proportion here. As press secretary, Sanders is an habitual liar (that is the job of a press secretary, regardless of who she serves), but she's also not, I don't know, Henry Kissinger at the height of the Vietnam War, or even Stephen Miller, the Trump adviser credited with engineering the controversial family-separation policy talking place on our southern border. From a strictly pragmatic level, did the bouncing of Sarah Huckabee Sanders do anything to undermine Trump's support or policies? No, of course not. If anything, it simply hardens the hearts of his supporters. It's no secret that Donald Trump is the troll in chief, an expert hand at making people who disagree with him act like total jerks. Time and again, for instance, the media gets blinded by its Trump Delusion Syndrome and makes serious mistakes (most recently, consider the case of the girl that wasn't separated at the border). Nobody wins in a pissing contest but everybody ends up getting wet, right? In the wake of the incident, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), surely one of the least-impressive members of the group that Mark Twain called America's only native criminal class, has called for a non-stop campaign of public shaming of anyone associated with the Trump administration. "For these members of his cabinet who remain and try to defend him they're not going to be able to go to a restaurant, they're not going to be able to stop at a gasoline station," she dreams. Good luck with all that, Rep. Waters. America is already staggering under the weight of every goddamn thing we do being hyper-politicized. One of the creators of Twitte just apologized for eating a Chick-fil-A, for god's sake. If you want to actually change somebody's mind, you're far better off using unexpected opportunities to demonstrate essential humanity to your enemies and opponents, rather than fulfill stereotypes. Perhaps it would have been a smaller story (or none at all) if the Red Hen owner had taken a few minutes at the end of the meal to sit down with Sanders and explain the nature of her grievances with various Trump policies. I suspect that sort of treatment would go farther than kicking Sanders the hell out. As with most things, of course, this all really just life imitating Seinfeld. Here's a clip from an episode in which Jerry clears out a restaurant by forcing customers to find out whether the owner agrees with them on the issue of abortion. It's very funny, but I know I don't want to live in this sort of world. Photo Credit: White House Nick Gillespie is the editor at large of Reason and the co-author, with Matt Welch, of The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What's Wrong With America (2011/2012). Her money is green, and you can talk to her while she's chowing down.
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#1. To: Deckard (#0)
This is exactly where I am on the subject: open your doors to the stream of commerce, serve anybody who walks through that door unless they are being specifically disruptive. I think the law should be that. It IS that already, for the people who walk through the door who are racial, ethnic or religious minorities, or either sex. It is mostly that way, in most states, for sexuality. Right now the law lets businesses exclude Republicans or Democrats, but if this sort of thing becomes a trend, the law will need to change to include political affiliation as a protected class.
Why? What if all the liberal customers in the Red Hen restaurant walked out because the owner seated Sarah and her family, never to return? And they told their friends. And they picketed the restaurant? You're going to force a private business to take actions they deem detrimental to their business, maybe to the point of shutting down?
Yep. Do it all the time. There are things more important than people's personal convictions about things. The economy for one.
The economy? Which you are perfectly happy to shut down because there are things more important than people's personal convictions.
Nope. I am willing to shove aside individuals with dysfunctional convictions that serve to chop up the economy and massively raise social tensions. Example: hotel owners in the South back in the 1960s, who wanted to hold the line against selling rooms to traveling blacks. You will either sell the rooms without a fuss to whatever race comes through the door, or somebody else will occupy that niche in the economy that you wanted to occupy. You do not have the right to earn a living in business and enforce racism. You will choose. If you want to eat, you will drop the racism in business. Otherwise, go die of hunger. If businesses don’t want to serve Republicans, that’s not illegal. Perhaps they can put up signs: “No Republicans”, things like that. A little bit of that here and there will be tolerated, but if it starts growing to a whole movement of people, like segregation in the South, then it will have to be crushed out by the police power of the state, just like segregation was. We can tolerate a little bit of bigotry in business, as long as it is localized and cranky. But once something becomes a major movement that actually impairs a significant population, which Blacks and Republicans are, then you have to take away the right to do that, and crush a few bigots in public as an example. Businessmen fall in line pretty quickly after a serious display of power like that.
So far, the only stories I've read dealt with businesses that were localized and cranky. Yet you objected to them. There was no tolerance on your behalf. Again, your logic astounds me. And if one baker refuses, one florist refuses, one restaurant refuses -- aren't the 20 others who WILL do business with the protected species? Didn't Sarah and her party go right across the street to another restaurant which DID serve her group?
#14. To: misterwhite (#12)
In general, I object to bigots. I am willing to tolerate them in their private clubs and political organizations and other stuff they do at their own expense. But the stream of commerce needs to be open to everybody. When I roll through a one horse town at 1 AM and there’s one gas station open and I need gas, I need the law to COMPEL that operator to sell me gas, whether he wants to or not, unless I am doing some bad act to him or his station. Otherwise I could be stranded in the dark on account of his opinion about something. That doesn’t work. In a diverse, mixed country like ours, if you want the privilege of making money in the stream of commerce, you must serve everybody. If you’re too bigoted to do that, you do not have the privilege of being able to open a store and serve the stream of commerce. People have the right to walk into any open store and buy stuff. The store owner has no right to make money off of the American economy if he is going to selectively exclude people based on their race, sex, sexual orientation, religion. And if political affiliation becomes a thing, which it might, then that too will have to be something that the law protects.
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/LatestUnlike many of my Reason colleagues, I don't get too bothered with laws that mandate equal treatment under the law at businesses that are open to the public. If you want to be a private club so you can discriminate for x or y reason, go right ahead. But there is a social value in saying that businesses that claim to be open to the public will not be allowed to exclude individuals or groups unless they are being specifically disruptive. It's one thing to kick out a rowdy party of women at a restaurant. It's another to refuse to serve women at all.
#5. To: Vicomte13 (#1)
open your doors to the stream of commerce, serve anybody who walks through that door
#7. To: misterwhite (#5)
(Edited)
You're going to force a private business to take actions they deem detrimental to their business, maybe to the point of shutting down?
#8. To: Vicomte13 (#7)
There are things more important than people's personal convictions about things. The economy for one.
#9. To: misterwhite (#8)
(Edited)
#12. To: Vicomte13 (#9)
We can tolerate a little bit of bigotry in business, as long as it is localized and cranky.
Replies to Comment # 12.
End Trace Mode for Comment # 12.
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