Gyroscopic Investing

“Conscience is the most sacred of all property”?.  Still true today?

https://upstreampolitics.wordpress.com/ ... -property/

http://hotair.com/archives/2015/03/28/v ... ant-point/

... Mountaineer

I predict making a profit will be far more of a priority than worrying about someone else's sexual preference or skin color.

This is the right-wing equivalent of a one-gun-a-month law: it affects practically nothing, pisses off the other side, and attracts a lot of negative press, all for little to no real gain.

MG and PS,

I'm not sure I understand your comments in reference to the article about James Madison - I must have been channeling Kshartle about the Madison/property rights stuff????  On the Indiana law, it seems to me it is much ado about nothing - really blown way out of proportion by the media moreso than one side trying to piss off the other - but that media behavior, I've come to expect.  So, I don't quite get your intent.

... Mountaineer

I don't understand the brouhaha about the Indiana law.  Everyone seems to forget that the "default" in what we like to call this free society is free association.  It was only because of specific, pressing needs that things like the Civil Rights Act created protected classes of race, creed, etc.  At this point in time, the oppressed minority is not the homosexual who has a billion different options for wedding bakers, but the Christian baker who must choose between celebrating a marriage he believes to be abhorrent and closing up shop.

So, first, sexual orientation is not a protected class in Indiana anyway (although it is in some states).  So from that perspective, the law doesn't do much: it's already okay to not deal with homosexuals simply because they're homosexual.  Maybe it provides some more cover in case of a lawsuit.

Secondly, this whole class of laws is not analogous to the lunch counters turning away blacks.  Nobody is refusing to serve homosexuals just because they're homosexual.  The issue is being forced to actively participate in activities which are against conscience.

Suppose you were a signmaker.  You have a little shop, and you produce signage, flyers, billboards, etc.  A customer wants you to make signs for his upcoming cockfighting tournament.  Let's even say that cockfighting is legal (it was in Louisiana, I think, until not too long ago).  But you think it's inhumane, immoral, and disgusting.  Should you be forced to devote your creative efforts to drawing pictures of chickens being torn apart, and enticing people to come and participate?  No.  You should have the right to say you're not comfortable doing that.  Would you do a different project for the same customer, say, a sign for his kid's lemonade stand?  Sure.

Very different from the black lunch counter situation, where people aren't served simply because they're black.

If you ran a lunch counter and the grand dragon of the local Klan (we'll say not in costume) came in for a hamburger, you'd probably serve him.  If he wanted you to cater his next rally, you'd probably appreciate the right to say no.

Xan wrote: Very different from the black lunch counter situation, where people aren't served simply because they're black.

How is it any different?  Those Southerner whites actually believed the Negro race was honest-to-gawd inferior and shouldn't mix with whites.  It insulted their conscience to be forced to associate with them, nevermind share food, a bathroom, lodging or transportation.  These whites were willing to use violence to make sure that they were not forced to actively participate in anything that they were uncomfortable with.

It is exactly the same. Some Christians who disapprove of homosexuality and run businesses that serve the public want to be able to withhold their services from homosexual patrons because they disapprove of homosexuality and do not wish to associate with homosexuals. It is really no different from whites who ran businesses that served the public who wanted to be able to withhold their services from black patrons because they did not like blacks and do not wish to associate with them.

Now… perhaps this is should be allowed. No really! Maybe it should. But you can't really have one without the other and try to claim some kind of consistency in this matter.


The truth is that the civil rights act, like all laws, is interpreted and applied in a socially and temporally specific context. In the past, it was designed to erode racism against blacks, at the expense of racists who didn't want to serve them. Now it's being used to erode prejudice against gays at the expense of Christians who don't want to serve them. And it will be used for something else in the future, but here's an example of how it will not be used, courtesy of a Fox News puff piece about an all-female tire shop in San Antonio:

https://video.foxbusiness.com/v/1849899 ... show-clips

The fact that they don't hire men is clearly illegal discrimination under the Civil Rights Act. And yet, who's gonna take them to court over it? Nobody. The cultural zeitgeist does not support forcing women to consider hiring men if they don't want to the way it currently supports forcing Christians business owners to serve gays even if they don't want to.

MachineGhost wrote:

Xan wrote: Very different from the black lunch counter situation, where people aren't served simply because they're black.

How is it any different?  Those Southerner whites actually believed the Negro race was honest-to-gawd inferior and shouldn't mix with whites.  It insulted their conscience to be forced to associate with them, nevermind share food, a bathroom, lodging or transportation.  These whites were willing to use violence to make sure that they were not forced to actively participate in anything that they were uncomfortable with.

Because we're not talking about not serving them simply because they're homosexual.  We're talking about situations where a business owner would be required to actively participate in their homosexuality.

Do you support the right of the sign business owner to turn down the cockfighting business?  Or the right of the caterer to turn down the Klan?  Can you explain your guiding principle?

10 Americans Helped By Religious Freedom Bills Like Indiana's

http://thefederalist.com/2015/03/30/mee ... -indianas/

I'm actually a libertarian in this arena. Businesses should be able to hire, fire, promote, pay and associate as they deem to be correct. If you don't like it, don't work for them or be a customer of them.

I do however think many areas of discrimination are in very bad taste.

And I also believe in a strong social safety net and/or citizen's dividend.

Xan wrote: Because we're not talking about not serving them simply because they're homosexual.  We're talking about situations where a business owner would be required to actively participate in their homosexuality.

So a Christian baker who bakes a wedding cake for a gay wedding is participating in homosexuality? Is a gay baker who bakes a wedding cake for a straight wedding participating in heterosexuality?

Xan wrote: Do you support the right of the sign business owner to turn down the cockfighting business?  Or the right of the caterer to turn down the Klan?  Can you explain your guiding principle?

My guiding principle is the same as Moda's: free association should be paramount, and the civil rights act should be repealed. Anyone should be able to do or not to do business with anyone they like. Period. Full stop.

But we don't live in that world. In the world we do live in, where people who run businesses that serve the public are required not to deny their services to people who are members of certain protected classes because of their status as members of those protected classes, we have to respect that law as well as the cultural impulses that support it, lest we be left behind by history and society, which are clearly on the side of normalized homosexuality nowadays. Time to get on board the tolerance train instead of standing on the tracks and letting it run you down.

Most of the arguments I've seen that Christians should be able to deny services to gays because they don't like gays or support homosexuality are, as Moda puts it, in extremely bad taste. I know a ton of Christians who are not in the least bit threatened by gayness. Even if deep down inside, a few of them think that gays are going to hell, they don't feel any need to avoid them or try to avoid doing business with them or anything. It's infantile and insecure, like the loony leftists who want to pretend that guns don't exist and push investment companies to divest from Ruger and S&W and dumb shit like that. Time to acknowledge reality that gays and guns are not going away and are normal parts of modern American society. If you think they're icky and don't want to have anything to do with them… you lost that war. Sorry.

As for cockfighters and the KKK… they're not protected classes, so discriminate away. The civil rights act does not apply to them; they have no right to be free from discrimination. Such is life.

Perhaps the underlying issue is people do not like being forced to do something they do not want to do for whatever reason.  Would we have a better "society" if, instead of a homosexual wanting laws that force someone to bake a cake for their same-sex wedding, they instead just came up with a better case?  The principle being, if you don't like the situation, make a better case so people will want to change their behavior.  I think in the long term, you catch more flies with honey than vinegar.  Suppressed feelings lead to resentment - resentment that often expresses itself in very ugly ways.  However, the odds of this "make a better case" happening are pretty slim for the same reason Desert's "No sinners allowed" bar will always be empty. 

... Mountaineer

Pointedstick wrote:

Xan wrote: Because we're not talking about not serving them simply because they're homosexual.  We're talking about situations where a business owner would be required to actively participate in their homosexuality.

So a Christian baker who bakes a wedding cake for a gay wedding is participating in homosexuality? Is a gay baker who bakes a wedding cake for a straight wedding participating in heterosexuality?

Well, yes.  See, a wedding baker isn't simply selling a cake at a storefront.  He's lending his creativity to a particular event.  Often he's at the event.  His name is on it.  He's pretty intimately involved.  It's not a matter of wanting to avoid gay people; it's being forced to participate in the event.  Same with the photographer scenario.  They're being forced to participate in and endorse something that is abhorrent, something that undermines an institution that they hold dear.

As for your argument about protected classes: in many states, including Indiana, homosexuals are NOT a protected class.  So...  discriminate away, right?  Respect the law!

It's interesting that you call your view the "tolerance train".  My view is tolerant: nobody is suggesting these bakers are persecuting gays by not wanting to make their cakes.  THAT is live and let live.  Intolerance is forcing the baker to make the cake.  You're advocating tolerance as long as everybody agrees with you.

Xan wrote: As for your argument about protected classes: in many states, including Indiana, homosexuals are NOT a protected class.  So...  discriminate away, right?  Respect the law!

Oh! Well in that case, what problem is this law trying to solve? Were there any actual examples of gay bakers in Indiana turning away gay customers and being sued to death?

Xan wrote: Because we're not talking about not serving them simply because they're homosexual.  We're talking about situations where a business owner would be required to actively participate in their homosexuality.

Do you know how ridiculous that sounds?  You're essentially saying that Southern white people became Negro or wore blackface paint when they "actively participated" in serving the Negro race food, water, transportation and/or lodging?  So where are all these Christian business owners there were forced to engage in homosexual sexual acts against their will so that they "actively participated"?

I support anyone to do what they want so long as it isn't coercively discriminatory.  We don't need legislation to enforce the ability to discriminate, only to prevent it.  These Christians appear to be doing the former?  If they don't want to serve homosexuals, then simply don't.  But don't go getting the state involved in enforcing their discrimination.  That is no different than Jim Crow.

The thing I actually find annoying about things like this is that it seems that the biggest excuse to disobey a federal law that gets enthusiastic backing is the "religious exception."

That's taking already jumbled laws and making them more ridiculous by allowing a loophole by saying "my religion doesn't like this."

Well my "religion" doesn't like taxes, war, public roads, and drones.  Where is my say?

Sometimes you have to suck up being part of a society, and you don't get special exceptions based on a woefully unproven authority figure's potential but unproven preferences about human behavior.

However, the real annoying agenda here is the liberal one... where people think they have the right to preclude a business from discriminating (something people do in their associations on an a daily basis without being sued).  Discrimination is in bad taste, but it's not a violation of someone else's sovereignty.  This whole idea that people are simply entitled to be employed and/or served by a business is ridiculous, and we're afraid to call it out as such because, understandably, we have the issue of blacks in the south presenting us with a pretty uncomfortable picture of what the alternative is like.

However, I tend to think that it's different in some ways.  Blacks we're brought here chained together on boats and basically built the dirty south at gunpoint while being beaten and raped along the way.  There were so many systemic/societal crimes against them that asking a business owner 100 years later to serve them a hamburger is a different deal than someone with no familial connection to gross oppression wanting a fabulous cake for his wedding and getting turned down by the local baker.

But if we're going to allow discrimination, it's annoying to me that while I am ok with allowing it, that we need something as silly and inconsistent and subjective as a "religious exception" to push enthusiasm for these things.  It's shows in a pretty ironic way how ridiculous and irrational this debate has become.

How about, I get to discriminate because it's my f*king business and I get to do with my property what I want, and associate with who I want, so quit projecting your subjective values onto my liberty and I'll do the same, rather than "I believe in a creator that says these things are wrong according to one part of one book."


BTW Xan, I'm not trying to undermine your beliefs... just pointing out how easy it could be to use a religious exception for pretty much any law given how subjective those claims can be (even, obviously, if they're wrong.... those are still "their beliefs"... and we have to respect those, supposedly, to the point of throwing all rationality out the window).

moda0306 wrote: How about, I get to discriminate because it's my f*king business and I get to do with my property what I want, and associate with who I want, so quit projecting your subjective values onto my liberty and I'll do the same, rather than "I believe in a creator that says these things are wrong according to one part of one book."

I don't think that's going to convince anyone because the cat's already out of the bag now.  The religious right perjured themselves and their cause by being racist, homophobic and xenophobic dodoheads.  The leftwing loonies know this and use it against them.

MachineGhost wrote:

moda0306 wrote: How about, I get to discriminate because it's my f*king business and I get to do with my property what I want, and associate with who I want, so quit projecting your subjective values onto my liberty and I'll do the same, rather than "I believe in a creator that says these things are wrong according to one part of one book."

I don't think that's going to convince anyone because the cat's already out of the bag now.  The religious right perjured themselves and their cause by being racist, homophobic and xenophobic dodoheads.  The leftwing loonies know this and use it against them.

Yes.  But I'd argue that it should NOT be illegal to be a racist, homophobic, and xenophobic dodohead.  Sure, you can "use it against them," but ask people to vote with their feet, rather than bringing the guns of the state to sort out the matter.

I just think liberals are way off on this.  Stick to global warming, rebuilding infrastructure, a citizen's dividend, ending wars, and net neutrality.  Trying to pit middle class Christians against middle class homosexuals is 1) wrong in and of itself, and 2) isn't going to advance their more legit causes.

Well, that's very interesting. I'm willing to admit I was wrong. Maybe it really is just a typical liberal overreaction.

This part rings true to me:

It seems to me that the media/elite freakout over the Indiana law is a moral panic analogous to the freakout over the UVA rape case. People rushed like lemmings to endorse as true something that turned out to be a hoax because it confirmed their prejudices about Bad Classes of People. This is why so many in the media are making no pretense to be fair in their reporting and commentary on the Indiana law. As Mollie Hemingway avers, the most interesting — and most worrying — aspect of all this is that religious liberty is not considered to be important at all to very many people in this country, especially the most powerful people.

Xan wrote:

Pointedstick wrote:

Xan wrote: Because we're not talking about not serving them simply because they're homosexual.  We're talking about situations where a business owner would be required to actively participate in their homosexuality.

So a Christian baker who bakes a wedding cake for a gay wedding is participating in homosexuality? Is a gay baker who bakes a wedding cake for a straight wedding participating in heterosexuality?

Well, yes.  See, a wedding baker isn't simply selling a cake at a storefront.  He's lending his creativity to a particular event.  Often he's at the event.  His name is on it.  He's pretty intimately involved.  It's not a matter of wanting to avoid gay people; it's being forced to participate in the event.  Same with the photographer scenario.  They're being forced to participate in and endorse something that is abhorrent, something that undermines an institution that they hold dear.

As for your argument about protected classes: in many states, including Indiana, homosexuals are NOT a protected class.  So...  discriminate away, right?  Respect the law!

It's interesting that you call your view the "tolerance train".  My view is tolerant: nobody is suggesting these bakers are persecuting gays by not wanting to make their cakes.  THAT is live and let live.  Intolerance is forcing the baker to make the cake.  You're advocating tolerance as long as everybody agrees with you.

You're right, and PS is wrong.
It just goes to show, you never know. 

moda0306 wrote: The thing I actually find annoying about things like this is that it seems that the biggest excuse to disobey a federal law that gets enthusiastic backing is the "religious exception."

That's taking already jumbled laws and making them more ridiculous by allowing a loophole by saying "my religion doesn't like this."

Well my "religion" doesn't like taxes, war, public roads, and drones.  Where is my say?

Sometimes you have to suck up being part of a society, and you don't get special exceptions based on a woefully unproven authority figure's potential but unproven preferences about human behavior.

However, the real annoying agenda here is the liberal one... where people think they have the right to preclude a business from discriminating (something people do in their associations on an a daily basis without being sued).  Discrimination is in bad taste, but it's not a violation of someone else's sovereignty.  This whole idea that people are simply entitled to be employed and/or served by a business is ridiculous, and we're afraid to call it out as such because, understandably, we have the issue of blacks in the south presenting us with a pretty uncomfortable picture of what the alternative is like.

However, I tend to think that it's different in some ways.  Blacks we're brought here chained together on boats and basically built the dirty south at gunpoint while being beaten and raped along the way.  There were so many systemic/societal crimes against them that asking a business owner 100 years later to serve them a hamburger is a different deal than someone with no familial connection to gross oppression wanting a fabulous cake for his wedding and getting turned down by the local baker.

But if we're going to allow discrimination, it's annoying to me that while I am ok with allowing it, that we need something as silly and inconsistent and subjective as a "religious exception" to push enthusiasm for these things.  It's shows in a pretty ironic way how ridiculous and irrational this debate has become.

How about, I get to discriminate because it's my f*king business and I get to do with my property what I want, and associate with who I want, so quit projecting your subjective values onto my liberty and I'll do the same, rather than "I believe in a creator that says these things are wrong according to one part of one book."


BTW Xan, I'm not trying to undermine your beliefs... just pointing out how easy it could be to use a religious exception for pretty much any law given how subjective those claims can be (even, obviously, if they're wrong.... those are still "their beliefs"... and we have to respect those, supposedly, to the point of throwing all rationality out the window).

So you are actually a libertarian! I had you pegged wrong.

Tech,

Only on some issues where I think the government's actions are jumbled and arbitrary rather than having some sound basis in market failure's, or a lack of the free market's ability to represent functional or moral reality.

moda0306 wrote: Tech,

Only on some issues where I think the government's actions are jumbled and arbitrary rather than having some sound basis in market failure's, or a lack of the free market's ability to represent functional or moral reality.

That's too bad, because the quote I bolded from your previous message,

it's my f*king business and I get to do with my property what I want, and associate with who I want, so quit projecting your subjective values onto my liberty and I'll do the same,

is the essence of libertarianism. Maybe you should consider accepting that as a general rule rather than just when you feel like it.

Tech,

Libertarianism, or more accurately, anarcho-capitalism, has at its core the basis that capitalist property norms are morally perfect and undebatable.  I think there are a lot of flaws with that line of thinking that have nothing to do with "feeling."  However, I believe autonomy has to be respected in some economic arenas to sustain an efficient economy.

So it may be inconsistent to not ALWAYS respect perfect anarcho-capitalist priorities. But I believe those priorities are in and of themselves inconsistent, but have certain fundamental value in maintaining a productive, safe, happy, free-ish society.

Muslim bakeries are declining to participate in homosexual weddings:
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/kristine-m ... m-bakeries

Where is CNN?  Where is MSNBC?  Where is the Facebook outrage?  Where is Tim Cook?

Which direction does the "tolerance train" run this time?  Suppose I want a Jewish or Muslim caterer to work a luncheon, and I want to serve BLTs and pork tenderloin.  Do they have to do it, or can they decline?

I'm reminded of eHarmony: started and run by Dr Neil Clark Warren, it's a site to match people by personality into long-term, monogamous, Christian marriages.  (The site doesn't exclude non-Christians, but Dr Warren is an evangelical, and the site's formulas are based on that worldview.)

Somebody asked whether they'd do homosexual matching, and the quite reasonable response was, "that's not what we do, and we wouldn't know how to do it".  But the court disagreed!  It is now illegal in the United States of America to offer a matchmaking service without simultaneously promoting manly buttsex.

The solution here is clearly the revolutionary idea that customers and service providers be allowed to freely negotiate between each other.

As an aside: I have no understanding why somebody would desire to hire a wedding baker, or photographer, or matchmaking service which didn't want to provide the service!  Do you get better service by pointing a gun at somebody and saying "or else"?