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There is no right to be associated with. Blacks had much more solid grievances in the systematic destruction of their own institutions, or indeed the original source of this whole mess in being imported as slaves.
I also question the assumption that they collectively desired, at the time, to destroy segregation. The MLK answer to the question was the one supported by power, and one that profits the needs for standardization, but was it really the most popular on the ground? Black nationalism was no less prolific ideologically. It simply didn't have the ear of USG.
In any case, the proposed solution is to remove imposition on either side and let people have segregated and non segretated communities as they please. Which you'd only object to if you don't actually care about consent.
I knew this would eventually come to the holy NHS. But public charity, even if it is expected doesn't raise to the level of a right.
People would look badly upon an English ruler that did not take proper care of the elderly, they probably would not fight him to the death on this alone.
As for rights to political participation, I find it silly to view them as positive given how they are framed and justified in every foundational document as a protection against tyranny.
Well sure there is we were just talking about it. The right to free association. And of course that wasn't the worst thing done to them, but if you think segregation shouldn't have been done away with without consent then their right to free association should not have been removed without consent. You can't have it both ways. And it doesn't matter what they wanted collectively does it? If a single black or white person did not want segregation then their rights were removed. And therefore when their rights were restored with the removal of segregation they were just going back to the status quo.
As for voluntary segregation people can do that today. Many areas in the US are either exclusively or almost exclusively segregated. You just can't use race when offering services, and you can't have legal segregation that the government will enforce. It is now up to you to avoid black people (or vice versa), and if that means you have to move rather than them, then that is the right you have. You just can't legally force someone else to move. Your beliefs, you have to be the one to make the effort to abide by them. You want no black people in your neighborhood, you have to move neighborhoods, you can't make them move. Otherwise, you are trying to force people to act a certain way to accommodate your beliefs. You are not entitled to force people to change their behavior. You are entitled to move to rural Montana or Amish country or wherever you can find that meets your criteria.
We're not talking about the NHS by the way holy or otherwise. That is healthcare not housing and feeding, which is administered by entirely different bodies, primarily local governments. The right to healthcare is a relatively modern invention. The right for people in England to be fed and housed if they could not do it themselves is hundreds of years older. It is heavily framed within English common law AND statutory law. Whether people would fight to the death about it is not the definition of a right, otherwise the right to bear arms or the right to freedom of speech both of which have been restricted are also not rights.
This is a negative right that protects your freedom to refuse to associate or to associate with willing people without it being prevented by the State.
Some greengrocer who would serve blacks and whites equally in the same establishment would not break this, but neither would one that only serves one of these groups. And if all greengrocers in your area serve the group you are not part of, your right has not been violated either. At least not under the traditional English conception of such things.
There are pubs in Britain with centuries old signs on the front that say "no x allowed".
It is only later universalist developments in liberal political theory that would qualify this state of things as a violation. Because they care about result rather than process.
The idea that you have a right to participate in somebody else's business by virtue of your existence is actually a violation of freedom of association.
Hence this is only contradictory if we accept your conclusion, which I, and many Libertarians and Liberals, do not.
This is wholly untrue. The Civil Rights Act makes this functionally illegal. You cannot setup a village of only your group and only hire people who are part of it. The only exceptions made for this are for tribes and other such minority groups that setup treaties or special status.
If you so much as try to setup Orania in the US, your wife gets shot in front of your children after Feds entrap you on bullshit gun charges. And if you actually do set it up, your women and children get burned alive by conveniently disappearing incendiary grenades.
Correct. Because to do so is to step over someone else's right to free association as I pointed out in my example. What you can do is move to an all white area. What you can't do is stop a black person moving in. Nothing stops you moving to another white area and another. Because your neighbors have the right to associate with black people even if you don't want to, and black people have the right to associate with them. That is the part you must come to grips with. Your neighbor has the right to sell his property to anyone including a black person. Therefore you are the one who must take steps if you have this particular belief. Like a vegan going to a Thanksgiving dinner, you have a right not to eat the food, you do not have the right to demand other people also stop eating turkey.
And yet, if I buy all the land myself or in a compact with people that refuse to sell it (this is how Orania actually works), I still get killed by feds. Curious.
In any case, your line of argument is absurd because it is applicable to any contractual limitation. And I don't see you particularly miffed that non compete clauses or HOAs exist, despite them being clear violations of your conception of freedom of association.
I think you simply desire the state limit what contracts people can sign because you don't like certain kinds of contracts and certain kinds of contractors. Not because they actually violate anybody's rights.
Why shouldn't a vegan be allowed to ban meat eating at his Thanksgiving dinner, exactly? Or setup his own commune of vegans that kicks out people for meat eating? I say that the naked truth is that you have imperial designs of how this vegan hypothetical should live his life because you fear the popularity of veganism may threaten the meat supply and are therefore locked in a political struggle that has nothing to do with freedom and everything to do with domination.
Ancient traditions are specifically evolved as a remedy for this problem, mind you.
Oh I hate HOA's with the burning passion of a million fiery suns! It's just not a topic that comes up here very often.
A vegan can ban meat at his own Thanksgiving dinner, but he cannot ban it at his neighbors is my point. And he can set up a vegan commune! Those exist! But what he can't do without violating someone else's rights is ban his neighbor from being a carnivore, any more than the neighbor can ban him from being vegan.
In general you cannot give up your fundamental rights. If you were a vegan and signed a contract that you would never eat meat again, I think most courts would find that unenforceable. You can't give up your own right to self-determination. If you join a cult you must be able to leave, even if a prior version of you thought you never would want to. There are some things you simply cannot contract away.
We certainly agree that if there's one right that can't be contracted away it's exit. Otherwise you're a slave pretty much.
But that's not what you're demanding here, it's entry you're demanding. You want the vegans not to be able to write up a simple contract that says "anybody renting this land must forego meat on penalty of being kicked out".
If anything you're denying other people's exit from a system where eating meat can't be banned.
And if you're fine with it, why is it illegal for the vegans to add "no blacks or unisex bathrooms" to the list of conditions?
Yup, in a tension between rights there has to be some level of reasonableness. To be fair I also think a meat eater commune couldn't do the reverse. I think if a Native American on a reservation wants to sell his house to a white man he should be able to. You can contract that they can't damage your land, you can contract they don't unreasonably annoy the neighbours with noise et al. But you can't contract restrictions on eating meat or that they can't make any sounds at all for example. Some things are simply not reasonably contractual. What those things are will vary culture to culture, and in the US situation given their history of as you pointed out enslaving a race against their will, the ensuing Civil War, and then further decades of various discriminatory laws they are very sensitive to racial issues like that. In a different place or a different location it might be different. In Northern Ireland Catholic and Protestant balanced rights have to be considered more than Jews or whatever, in Germany they are sensitive to antisemitism instead.
In some hypothetical nation where vegans were hunted nearly to extinction, there might be carve outs like Native American reservations or peace walls or what have you, as a practical matter, for vegans, to protect them from attack and harassment, but it wouldn't be because they have a fundamental right to bar others, just that nations are complicated and sometimes it is necessary to compromise for the greater good.
And here we see that you don't actually hold any of these principles, you're just committed to them up to the point where they become annoying, at which point "reasonableness" prevails.
Which is to say, the reasonableness of enforcing your preferred society at bayonet point.
This isn't a rare phenomenon mind you, people roll eyes all the time at the great defenders of "democracy" that are horrified every time the majority has something to say that they don't like.
But still, don't you think it's dishonest to say you love freedom when you're ready to put it back in the box at the first sight of racial animus, in a country that is literally founded on not doing that and having faith in the hearts of men to responsibly uphold a decent society?
If you want reasonable government, China seems a lot better at that.
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