Progressives and the anti-liberty crowd have decided that if one opens a business he checks his own rights at the door. As such, the business owner is compelled by the state to serve anyone and everyone that the state has determined have special rights — but can exclude currently out of favor segments like Christians, Holocaust deniers, 9/11 truthers, vaccine skeptics, Donald Trump supporters and so forth.
Anyone who feels “offended” or has a “personal truth” they demand others recognize and bow to can “cancel” almost any business or get anyone fired.
To most Americans, whether one has rights depends upon whose ox is being gored. But liberty, freedom of choice and freedom of association are all concepts of natural law. The state cannot require one protected class be granted “rights” without taking rights from someone else.
Progressives would have you believe that allowing business owners to operate in a discriminatory fashion would lead to wholesale discrimination against certain classes. To prevent such wholesale discrimination, progressives created laws — not the least of which is the 14th Amendment — to force businesses to operate in a manner contrary to their owner’s beliefs or conscience, a clear violation of the 1st Amendment’s “free exercise” and “freedom of assembly” clauses and state religious liberty laws.
Jim Crow is the cudgel progressives love pull out to beat about the head and shoulders of liberty lovers and supporters of laissez-faire capitalism. But Jim Crow laws were not societal or free market constructs. Instead, they were rooted in statism and efforts by racist progressives to restrict the free market from the period beginning in the early 1890s into the 1920s.
In his review of David W. Southern’s The Progressive Era and Race: Reform and Reaction, 1900-1917, Reason’s Damon Root wrote:…[T]he Progressive Era was also a time of vicious, state-sponsored racism. In fact, from the standpoint of African-American history, the Progressive Era qualifies as arguably the single worst period since …
… place.) The state, in the eloquent words of the historian C. Vann Woodward, granted “free rein and the majesty of the law to mass aggressions that might otherwise have been curbed, blunted, or deflected.”
Life in a free country is about being free to make choices, choices based on your own criteria rather than one mandated by the state. There are plenty of remedies
Don’t like fried chicken? Stay out of KFC.
Don’t like pizza? Avoid Pizza Hut.
Don’t care for seafood? Red Lobster isn’t the only restaurant in town.
Denny’s gave you lousy service? Stay away… and tell your friends.
Don’t like how Walmart compensates its workers? Buy your cheap Chinese junk from Target or the local mom-and-pop store — and your groceries from Publix or Kroger.
Don’t like it that Chick-fil-A’s president supports traditional marriage? Buy your chicken sandwich from Burger King. They’ve gone all in on “gay pride.”
Don’t like how Starbucks treats black customers or gun owners? Get your coffee from Joe Muggs.
Don’t like Muslims? Stay out of the Middle East, mosques, Louis Farrakhan rallies and U.S. prisons — and Deerbornistan, Michigan. Don’t like Jews? Stay out of Israel, New York, Massachusetts, California, synagogues anywhere and jewelry stores.
Don’t like kids? Avoid daycares, schools and playgrounds… or get a job at Planned Parenthood.
Don’t like blacks? Move to Montana, Vermont or Idaho. There aren’t many there.
Don’t like whites? Move to Detroit; Jackson, Mississippi; Miami Gardens, Florida; Birmingham, Alabama; Baltimore; or Memphis, Tennessee. You will see some, but they’ll be the minority.
That’s discrimination. It’s also called liberty, freedom of choice and, in the concept of natural law, freedom of association as guaranteed in the 1st Amendment.
What is not freedom is when the state compels you to serve, associate with or accommodate those you don’t want to, regardless of the reason. That’s called slavery and tyranny. Enslaved people have no rights.
The problem is that people are trying to see and understand the American system as free enterprise. In fact, it has been socialist for a hundred years, operating under the umbrella of an increasingly totalitarian and coercive system that brooks no dissent from its doctrine of promoting ever more degenerate behavior.
This is a most sensational testimony of the power of naming government systems something that they are not and imposing it on the public mind and psyche by a long process of “public education” and highly sophisticated and organized propaganda on a worldwide basis.
Socialism in America today is seen as desirable, especially by these younger people, because people blame “capitalism” for their problems, never realizing that the former capitalist free-market economy of the United States has been operating under national socialism for a century now. Oh no, it’s never described as such. There are only code words used to deceive. Things may not be nice just because they have a pretty face.
The only escape from tyranny is mental freedom — a transition from the unconscious to the conscious mind. Mental freedom precedes physical freedom. Mental freedom is not a figment of idealism or philosophy. It delivers peace of mind and unlimited prosperity to the individual right under the nose of oppressive government.
To escape oppressive government is to escape the thought system into which we are born.
Written by Bob Livingston
