free enterprise

[Douglas <dougwils@moscow.com>]

Dear visionaries,

Carl Westburg is quite right. I forgot to sign my post. I was bad. Can I
still come to your restaurant?

In response to Ted Moffett, I fully understand that the current legal
situation makes a distinction between speech and restaurant management. I
want to know why. How come? By what standard? What is so magical about
speech? Why is the First Amendment misunderstood and then absolutized?
Why is the Tenth Amendment ignored? Give me an argument, not a court
decision. I know about the court decisions, because the court decisions
are causing the problem I am resisting. If behavioral patterns have the
same protections on someone else's private property as does race, then
where do we stop? Remember the basic question, which is by what
standard? Do I have to serve neo-Nazis? homosexuals? heterosexuals?
Congressmen? quilters? kleptomaniacs? smokers? Masons? barefoot
teenagers? topless women? men with Tourette's syndrome?
tree-huggers?

Melynda Huskey asks for us to remember to be as civil as we can be in our
exchanges -- which I am certainly happy to do. Remember, my use of
"jerk" was applied to the hypothetical racist, the one that
some folks on this list like to assume resides a millimeter beneath my
argument. So please remember that civility includes refusing to rush to
the facile equation (for progressives) of theological conservatism with
hate speech, racism, and so on.

Cordially,

Douglas Wilson