Free enterprise

[Douglas <dougwils@moscow.com>]

Morning, visionaries

Troy asks: "Perhaps we could agree that equal opportunity to access
social goods is a fundamental principle of this society . .
."

This sounds grand as a slogan. But is a private club, members only, a
social good? Is a restaurant owner's desire to manage a place that
maintains a certain tone a social good? Or is the only social good the
commodity sold? Is freedom of association a social good? All these
questions, and many more like them, show that we cannot use terms like
"social good" without assuming a standard. What is that
standard? And if equal opportunity to access these social goods is going
to be enforced by the Law, then why is the worldview that views one thing
as a social good and denies that another is to be imposed on the rest of
us?

In response to Ted, I want to argue that with regard to true civil
rights, justice should be blind to the status of that individual. But
there is a difference between the right of habeus corpus, which I
believe should apply to all of us, tall, short, heterosexual, homosexual,
female, male, black, white, etc., and the "right" to affordable
housing. In the latter case, the right can only be granted if someone
else's rights (in this case, to his own money) is infringed. True civil
rights restrict the government. 

Do you want me to sign something that says the burden of proof in a
homosexual's criminal trial should be identical to the burden of
proof in a heterosexual's trial? Like a shot, sign me up. Do you want me
to say that a little old lady renting out her duplex apartment next door
should be coerced in renting to a man and woman living together, as they
used to say, without benefit of clergy? I'm not going to do it -- because
you can only give to the couple that you have taken from the little old
lady. Did I mention she was in her eighties?


Cordially,


Douglas Wilson