Well, a cogent criticism I have read of libertarian leaning people is that they tend to emphasize the injustice when a government violates civil rights or liberties but have very little to say about private individuals violating others rights. This is most emphasized when discussing "Jim Crow Laws".
One must ask the question about Jim Crow Laws....at whom were these various local and state laws directed for the most part?? It is true they affected Black people in a severe and unjust manner.....however they were enforced against business owners in the South. They were written as codes regulating the conduct of business. They were laws that basically interfered with the fundamental right of a property owner to use his or her property as he or she wished, ie to serve whomever he or she wanted.
One must ask the question whether the libertarians adherence to the inviolability of property rights is not an ignorance of the history of slavery in America and that history must be "corrected."
But I come back to the "law" in segregation. Without the imposition of government, segregation in a broad sense would barely have been possible, and THAT we can argue on. Even on the question of slavery, if we OWN our own labor then what right, on a fundamental level did slavery violate?? The right to one's own labor, a property right. However, on a deeper level, the problem was that society did not acknowledge the slaves right to own ANY property, much less his or her labor. And so, when one is denied his or her property rights one is susceptible to becoming a piece of property themselves. This was the manifestation of the denial of the right of personhood to the slave; the denial of the right to ownership of property or of himself. This is why the right to ownership of property and person is such a fundamental human right. Not because "greed is good" or some narcissistic need to acquire, but because ultimately the right to own is the right not to own. If we have the fundamental right to our labor and our property then our ownership of those things can be a manifestation of our pursuit of happiness. We can choose what to labor at, what to buy, what to sell or not buy and not sell or give away or what, we are free to choose because we are a person born with rights.
Sometimes our views on various topics are shaped by the ways that we shape the questions we ask ourselves when trying to form opinions on them. It is self-questioning that is the essential primary element to rational thought. Before we ask a question to another we ask it of ourselves
we answer it or not and then wonder how another person, a person we respect, would answer and what questions they would ask that we have not thought of. This is how Human Knowledge is created. It is the interaction between the inner life of the mind of the individual and the social interaction that is so necessary to advance knowledge as a whole, the knowledge of the human race.
But it begins with the individual mind and self-questioning. Self-questioning takes imagination. The imagination to see multiple perspectives upon the same question. And now another tangent is gone off on!!! :) how bout some kick ass Tchaikovsky?? good night, more tomorrow....maybe....
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