Re: free enterprise

["Ted Moffett" <ted_moffett@hotmail.com>]

Douglas:

I think most everyone on your list of restaurant customers it could be 
argued should be served at your restaurant, though you are free to organize 
a rally against what any of them represent, or write a book about how much 
you oppose any of them.  However, right now in Moscow and most anywhere in 
the USA the topless women, the barefoot teenager and the smoker would be 
banned from your restaurant for health and safety reasons.  But you know 
this, of course.  See the sign at the Tesoro gas station on the eastside:  
NO SHIRT NO SHOES NO SERVICE MEN AND WOMEN NO DISCRIMINATION.  Our Moscow 
City Council could have benefited from reading this simple statement on July 
15 2002.

In terms of the arguments as to why the laws are structured this
way about free speech and other forms of behavior, well, I'm sure you know 
the answer to this question also, or could give a good answer if you were to 
pretend you were facing the critical pen of an academic during your college 
days.  So there is no need for me to attempt to answer why the courts have 
ruled as they have, or why the US Constitution says what it says.

Maybe that Tesoro sign gives a clue: DISCRIMINATION.  Which might be 
connected to that silly constitutional amendment dealing with equal 
protection under the law?  Oh, I forgot, that's an evil notion derived from 
the twisted and Godless agenda of the Enlightenment.  Anyways, I'm no expert 
constitutional scholar like I guess you are?

Seriously though, if you will excuse my sarcasm...
You obviously don't like having to avoid discrimination, and if some nazi's 
walked into my restaurant I would not like it either, but who said being 
ethical was supposed to be easy?  And now I can't resist slumping back into 
mockery... because I forgot that according to your supreme unchallengeable 
ethics discrimination against some people IS ETHICAL!

But as a friend of mine keeps saying, the laws are written by whoever has a 
monopoly on organized violence (police, military, etc.), which I guess here 
in the USA is the government (national, state and local) of the USA, which 
actually has a monopoly on organized violence for the whole planet.  We are 
seeing this principle in action right now on a global scale.

Ted

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