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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.
Come now, the idea that principles may need to be traded off against each other in the real world is nothing new, even for Libertarians. Thinking that means people who do that don't actually have principles is just No True Scotsmanning. You see the same thing where people say Christians don't really believe abortion is murder otherwise they would be working harder to stop it. You don't get to decide how other people choose to instantiate their principles.
I love freedom. That doesn't mean I love freedom at any cost. Libertarians who believe a Libertarian nation should have a defensive military funded by taxes certainly understand that. Taxes may be theft but that is cold comfort if your neighbor who does fund their military rolls over your borders.
As for you comment about China if that is some kind of vague swipe about preferring communism, do better. As it happens I have spent significant time in China and it is definitely not a reasonable government by my metrics.
I don't think China is communist, well not in the sense you mean anyhow. Their political tradition is a lot more complicated than that. I think they genuinely value what you call reasonable here above freedom and I think that's a better fit for your revealed preferences of a hierarchy of values. I can also recommend Germany, perhaps Denmark.
The United States was not funded by people who believed in standing armies maintained by income tax. And neither was England.
It just so happens that the allure of power and it's consolidation through exception can erode principle. And not everyone has the moral fiber of a Cincinnatus.
For what it's worth I think it's silly to call yourself a Libertarian if you are a Liberal. Only one of these is fine with imposing moral order violently, at least have the guts to own it.
What you are missing is that there is a spectrum which runs from principles should never be compromised (the one that never works in the real world) to principles have no value. Indeed my experience is that Chinese lradership are less likely to compromise principles than me, they just have very different principles. In that regard they are closer to you than me.
As to how the US was founded, thats kind of my point. In the real world their Libertarian principles lasted all of about 5 seconds or their fledgling nation would have fallen apart. They suddenly were the ones crushing rebellions and imposing taxes. It turns out just like communism, Libertarianism is utopian but actually unworkable. I think Libertarians are fine principled people, and i have some close friends who are, but it is about as naive about human behavior as the communists. And the history of the US shows that perfectly. All men are created equal, except those its profitable for us to enslave, men should be free to rebel against governments they disagree with..until its our government. Those principles are corrupted immediately by self-interest.
But then why pretend to value freedom most of all when you are ultimately a pragmatist?
When I say that we should enact freedom of association, why can't you just say no? Why do this shell game of pretending you actually care about some kind of freedom that isn't actually upholding principle in any meaningful way?
"There is a spectrum of principle" is quite literally the devil's position on the matter. Kant is wrong about a lot of things but he is right about this: if something does not bind you and can be compromised on, then it is not something that provides any moral content to your decision making. It's just an aesthetic.
When did I say I valued freedom most of all? And saying no means I don't value freedom of association at all, I value it, just not exclusively. So my answer would be Yes, but.
Kant is wrong about many many things and this is one of them. It may be the devil's position but if it is, he inherited it from God. The bible explicitly supports justifiable lies. God rewards the midwives who lie to save male children for example. Because they were not lying for themselves but to save lives, and this showed they "feared God" i.e. correctly valued some of His laws over others. God is is not a Kantian.
There is a difference between something not providing ALL the moral content of your decision making and not providing ANY moral content to your decision making that you seem to be struggling to grasp.
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