(UPDATE: join the discussion about this sorry development here, at my Examiner.com page.)
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Well, it’s a sad day for the nation when one of its most brilliant polemicists goes all loopy, and one is obliged to — yes — fisk PJ O’Rourke.
Here, O’Rourke makes some vague motions in the direction of Goldwater’s opposition to the Civil Rights Act as the reason we lost the White House. He’s a bit cryptic but he’s suggesting Goldwater’s “no” cost the GOP the black vote forever — an old liberal line, poorly argued.
Odd. First: It was Southern Democrats, not Republicans, who voted down most civil rights legislation.
Second, Goldwater was right — and this election simply proved it.
He pointed out the unpleasant fact that the Constitution enshrined the right of “free association” — and that right supposed the right not to associate with people we might not care to, even if we are idiots for being so inclined.
(Goldwater, a white member of the NAACP, was personally was a desegrationist long before the word existed, having ordered the desegration of his family’s businesses and the Phoenix public school systems to name just two examples.)
He rightly feared, however, that forcing other people to be like him, to enter into contracts with each other whether they honestly wanted to or not, would undermine the very fabric of liberty, freedom of conscience and capitalism — capitalism being based upon the natural inclination of private individuals to freely enter into contracts with each other for goods and services, and freely decline to enter into those contracts when they find the terms unappealing.
When the “freely” part gets surgically removed by the State, bad things are bound to occur. Good intentions NEVER innoculate us from bad results.
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