Local news is the worst at using provacative titles to lure you into watching. The reader is forewarned that my title is accurate.
What is a racist? A racist is not per se violent, he believes that one or some races are superior to others. And by labeling the one superior labels the other inferior. This is different than saying one race is better at some things (by their genetics or social factors) than other races, which is a racial observation wrong or right. It is the dehumanization of a race in the mind of a racist that identifies him as such.
What is a statist? A statist, on the other hand, per se condones voilence and the threat of violence against peaceful people who have not violated natural law.
A racist will probably choose not to engage in certain activities with people of certain races. Such activities are usually social since if a racist decides not to engage in business with another race his profits will be hurt. The previous statement is not always true. For example, a racist bar owner, who caters to racist patrons (or a non-racist bar owner who caters to racist patrons) would see his business hurt by the inclusion of the despised race. The racist mechanic on the other hand who refuses to work on a truck owned by a person of a certain race will only be hurting himself. We all discriminate. Some stores find it detrimental to their business to include those who refuse to wear sox or shoes. The NAACP unifies around the ability to exclude people of different skin color. And Calvin College finds that they thrive by hiring professors who are members of the CRC denomination or are willing to undergo more frequent reviews if they are not. The racist is simply exercising freedom of association, which is a consistent extension of our natural rights to self and property.
A statist will achieve his goals not by exercising freedom and respecting the rights of others, but by violating natural rights and aiming to destroy freedom. Hyperbolic? Not in the least. To quote Nock, "every increase in political power is countered by a roughly equivalent decrease in social power". The freedom to exercise social power, whether in commerce or charity, is taken away by any increase in state power. How can we be said to be a free people when some are forced into supporting the will and convictions of others?
Our society is completely backwards on the issues of racism and statism. This was typified recently by the hysteria over Rand Paul's comments about the Civil Rights Act. If you don't know, when asked what he thought about the CRA he said that he abhors racism but he doesn't think we should be telling business owners what to do. Paul was saying that what we needed in 1964 was to repeal mandated segregation, not mandate desegregation. The government told businesses what to do before the CRA and they were telling businesses what to do after the CRA. Desegregation was well on it's way as a revolt against Jim Crow laws, the best thing for freedom was to simply legalize desegregation. The same can be said about slavery. We didn't need a civil war, simply legalize freedom in some states, let the south secede, and slavery in the south would collapse as slaves fled to the north. A fantasy? No, slavery collapsed in all other countries around the world by the 20th century without violence.
It may appear that I've gone off track but both examples are very relevant: legalize freedom first, denounce the state's choke hold on us, and then deal with second order immoralities. Yes I'm calling racism a "second order immorality" by which I mean there are first order problems. State violence, which is a first order immorality, cannot be used to cure the "wrong thinking" of peaceful people. Other first order problems would include violence of individuals against individuals so in no way am I saying the KKK is better than the state or any other violent racist group. But they should be described in that order: violent, then racist.
I grew up learning how to be statist and a racist. I'm sickened by this fact, but I believe my faith in the state had a much greater potential to destroy lives than my racism. After all, I voted for Bush ... twice, who's responsible for the murder of innocents; I cheered on the Iraq war, and I believed in trickle down economics through subsidies to successful corporations. My tendency to racism on the other hand never lead to violence or theft and always took a back seat when it came to commerce. I defended the Rodney King beating because I trusted state law enforcement and my racism kept me blinded to the tragedy. My time in College helped me to respect all people or so I thought, but I still defended the Rodney King police officers and officers of the DEA. It wasn't until studying libertarianism that I truly came to respect all people, by which I came to respect their natural rights. My eyes were opened to the atrocities derived from state monopolization of law enforcement, and of the selective and racist crack-down on the unjust war on drugs.
To summarize, in a free society you have the right to be an asshole, but no asshole has a right to loot from some and give to others or to initiate violence.
I liked this post. I do think that libertarians have to give care to their public face - that's one blind spot for most people in the movement, I believe. The preference is so much for shock value rather than patiently showing how supporting all people's natural rights is fundamentally opposed to racism, at the outset.
ReplyDeleteSome questions were raised for me: I'm not sure how law enforcement would work without a "state monopoly." Second, should a society have any ability to intervene in foreign affairs when human rights are violated? Curious.
Ryan, I've been meaning to respond to your questions as later posts, but since I've been a little delinquent on that I figured I'll respond directly to this one. And by the way, thanks for reading :)
ReplyDeleteOf course society has the ability to intervene in foreign affairs, where "society" is just a convenient shorthand for "a group of individuals". What is immoral is to coercively extract resources to do so. In that case (taxation for foreign intervention) you're just violating the human rights of some to protect the human rights of others. The usual response is, "people are too lazy or selfish to make private action like that happen". This is where Nock's quote is especially applicable; this social power was long ago taken away from us and so we assume people just wouldn't do it. btw, this contradicts their claim that "we are the gov't" so if "we're too lazy and selfish then logically so is the gov't".
I like to turn the question around when asked "how would private police work?" and ask "how could private police be any worse than public?" (have I told you this before?) We wouldn't hire people to bust into other people's homes or our own to arrest us for lighting up a joint. The reason for your question (I'm assuming) is that you've never been given any answers; it has not been spelled out how private police might work (the exact solution would be up to the market, the aggregate bargaining of individuals). I also had doubts about the privatization and competition of law enforcement agencies. All those doubts were gone after reading "For a New Liberty" and "Chaos Theory". I can send you the specific chapter if you're interested in the details. It was so logical I don't know how I could have thought "public" police were a good idea.
Are libertarians after shock value or are there ideas just so non-mainstream that it just seems like that? I guess I'm hinting at what I think the answer is. I'm always trying to make inroads into people's logical side, to take a step back and ask "are these mantras such as 'liberty and justice for all' really possible with and by government?". This post appeals to logic albeit with a high shock-value title.