Notable Quote: Jeff Jacoby. And more - Granite Grok

Notable Quote: Jeff Jacoby. And more

Emphasis mine:

(Part 1)

…Should the law ban private companies from discriminating on the basis of sex (or race, religion, ethnicity, etc.)? There is wide agreement that invidious discrimination fueled by bigotry is contemptible, and most Americans accept the authority of government to suppress such ugliness from the marketplace.

I agree with the above.  But I also agree to the below which has been subsumed by the above:

(Part 2)

But discrimination that isn’t clearly rooted in bigotry should be left to the private sector to handle. Where is the virtue in using law to attack perfectly reasonable business ideas — like just-for-women car services or fitness clubs — for no better reason than the fact that they aren’t being offered to everyone? It is one thing to disallow supermarkets and motels from refusing to serve black customers. But how about a “black-hair” barbershop for black customers only? Or a dating service restricted to Latinos? Or a men-only drinking club? Or an ex-military boarding house that declines to rent to nonveterans?

In a free society, the presumption — absent overt, invidious bigotry — should always be in favor of allowing private parties to use their own property as they judge best. Markets and civil society, not Big Brother, should be the primary arbiter of what types of discrimination are intolerable. No one should object to a ride-hailing service just for women. What we should all object to is a legal system so obsessed with enforcing equal rights that it denies women the right to choose the ride that feels safest.

Jeff Jacoby (columnist, Boston Globe)

Read the first part about “public accommodation” at the link.  I agree with him – once again the “Free Association” clause made so small  by SJWs so as to be irrelevant (sorta the exact opposite of the Commerce Clause in Wickard vs Filburn that made Government’s control almost infinite, even reaching into a farmer’s use of his crop in his own home).

Remember, Jim Crow laws were government sponsored and enforced (mostly by, at the time, Southern Democrats).  Yes, it took Government involvement to fix.  But….

Sidenote: De Toqueville, as he toured the young America during the 1830s, was AMAZED at how Civil Society solved problems by themselves without reverting to Government to handle everything.  People saw the problem, assembled voluntarily, fixed it, and then dissolved having done the job that fit the particular problem.

…once started, it never, EVER stops. Why? Progressives / Socialists came along and started the crowding out of Civil Society from “problem solving” believing that only good things come from Government architecting and managing our lives and worse, that goodness needs Government.  What Jacoby is espousing is simply returning back to a time when Civil Society had its norms and was mostly self-regulating and self-correcting.

A similar problem is here in NH with a law (a while ago) that declared that all public accommodations would hence be smoke free under the rubric of “safety”.  the Right to private property and owners able to do what they wished WITH THEIR PRIVATE PROPERTY, was taken away by self-bossy SJWs. Now there is a law before the Legislature that would roll back that mandatory smoking ban should be lifted for restaurants, bars, and other private properties.  I support that proposed law – the market and individuals should make that decision for themselves.  Let the owners make that decision and take that risk of how to operate their establishments.

Government should stop treating everyone as children in that we don’t know what is best for us.  Children must be managed.  Adults, on the other hand, can assess risk and then decide what amount of risk they are willing to bear.  If I want to eat at a restaurant that allows smoking, that should be my decision.  And the opposite as well. THeir choice to allow it and mine not to patronize it.  And I’m not going to get mad about it – I’ll just go somewhere else and not interfere with with somebody else’s property. And not allow my nose to get all uppity.

Do I smoke?  No – never have.  My Dad did – and got and had throat cancer before I was born.  I only knew him with a hole in his throat – his voice box had been surgically removed.  It was his choice to smoke and mine not to.  My Youngest smokes – but he knows that if he comes over, he smokes off the property even in a blizzard.  My property – my rules.  He has decided that the my strictures are not sufficient to stay away.  A balance that we both are ok with.

So should in Jacoby’s examples and here in NH.

The First Amendment’s Free Association need to be brought back from the dead.

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