| | Free Speech, Freedom of Association & Private Property
Exactly, Michael! To allow a person the freedom to practice racial discrimination does not imply that one sanctions his conduct, any more than to allow him the freedom to express a racist viewpoint implies that one sanctions its content. Moreover, just as someone who opposes racist propaganda has no right under freedom of speech to ban it, so neither does someone who opposes racial discrimination have a right under freedom of association to ban it. One may not interfere with another person's freedom of choice simply because one disagrees with the way that he or she exercises that freedom.
Defenders of the First Amendment often point out that the true test of one's belief in freedom of speech is whether or not one allows freedom for speech that one finds offensive. By the same principle, the true test of one's belief in freedom of association is whether or not one allows freedom for associations that one finds offensive (e.g., those based on discrimination). In fact, he who has no right to freedom of association -- no right to determine whom to associate with -- has no right to refrain from practicing racial discrimination, should the government decide to make such discrimination mandatory. It is just such mandatory discrimination to which the old miscegenation and separate-but-equal laws bear grim testimony, and of which the contemporary statutes on affirmative action and racial quotas are a modern expression.
Observe that whereas the original intent of Title VII was to make racial discrimination illegal in private business, that statute has subsequently been interpreted to authorize affirmative action, making racial discrimination mandatory in private business. And this, despite assurances by proponent's of the statute that no such thing as quotas could ever be inferred from it. Consider, for example, the "famous last words" of Senator Hubert Humphrey when the Civil Rights Bill was being debated in Congress: "Contrary to the allegations of some opponents of this title, there is nothing in it that will give any power to the Commission or to any court to require hiring, firing, or promotion of employees in order to meet a racial 'quota' or to achieve a certain racial balance...." {110 Congressional Record 6549 (1964).}
Even more outrageous is that affirmative action violates explicit disclaimers included in Title VII itself. Section 703 (j) reads as follows: "Nothing contained in this title shall be interpreted to require any employer, employment agency, labor organization, or joint labor-management committee subject to this title to grant preferential treatment to any individual or to any group because of the race, color, religion, sex or national origin of such individual or group on account of any imbalance which may exist with respect to the total number of percentages of persons of any race, color, religion or sex, or national origin employed by any employer . . . ."
If it was not clear before, it should now be obvious that once the government can violate freedom of association in order to prevent discrimination, it can do so in order to mandate discrimination, even to the point of perverting and explicitly transgressing its very own civil rights statutes!
In addition to violating freedom of association, Title VII violates freedom of choice in the use of one's property. If another agent, such as the government, may dictate the use of an individual's property, then that agent is the true owner of the property, and the individual, merely its rightless, dispossessed custodian. The essence of ownership is the right of the owner to control his or her property (consistent with the right of others to control theirs). As the Supreme Court declared in 1917: "Property is more than the mere thing which a person owns. It is elementary that it includes the right to acquire, use, and dispose of it. The Constitution protects these essential attributes of property.... There can be no conception of property aside from its control and use, and upon its use depends its value." {Buchanan v. Warley, 245 U.S. 60, 74 (1917).}
(Edited by William Dwyer on 5/18, 11:55pm)
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