It Is Dangerous to Be Right When the Government Is Wrong (14 page)

The Supreme Court nonetheless held that the Civil Rights Act was constitutional as applied to that restaurant, due to its indirect sourcing of food from out of state. Because racial discrimination could lessen the total amount of food sold, meaning less business for out-of-state food sellers, Congress had a “legitimate” interest in eliminating this economic “burden.” As an initial matter, it should be clear that securing additional business for out-of-state enterprises was certainly not Congress's motivation in passing the Civil Rights Act (at least one should hope not); the Supreme Court is effectively “inventing” a rationale for the legislation. More importantly, this reading of the Commerce Clause has meant that Congress can regulate nearly any activity for any reason it chooses. Ask yourself the following question: How many states (and countries) were involved in producing the clothes you are wearing, the food you have eaten today—even the paper this book is printed on? With
Katzenbach
's jurisprudence, we are no longer a government of limited powers.

This topic brought Rand Paul, M.D., into some controversy on MSNBC's “Rachel Maddow Show” shortly after his 2010 Republican primary win for the U.S. Senate in Kentucky. Dr. Paul—now Senator Paul—stated that he supported most parts of the Civil Rights Act, except one—Title II. This statement sent politicians and the media into an uproar. Title II makes it unlawful for private businesses to discriminate against customers based on race. Dr. Paul and libertarians everywhere believe that the Natural Law is colorblind, that the personal decisions based on race are invidious and perfidious; but they also believe that the government has no right to force private persons or businesses (nongovernmental actors) to associate with whom they do not desire because this coercion violates First Amendment rights. The net result of the Civil Rights Act is forced association, which is unconstitutional on its face. Neither mandatory segregation nor mandatory association is consistent with the Natural Law or the Constitution in our free society.
¹⁵

The
Washington Post
described Dr. Paul's comments on the cable network as “an uncomfortable conversation about the federal government's role in prohibiting racial discrimination and about a period of history that most politicians consider beyond debate.”
¹⁶
It is depressing that we, as a society, cannot stomach a conversation on the fundamental freedom of association, property rights, and race in our allegedly “post-racial society.”

63

How Laborious! Labor Unions and the Denial of the Right to Associate

Throughout history, there is a constant and sorry trend of government attempting to fix a problem, inevitably exacerbating the problem, and ultimately violating personal freedoms in the process. In the wake of severe economic troubles during the Great Depression, Congress passed the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), also called the Wagner Act. At the time, unemployment was high, and the standard of living was declining quickly. In theory, the Act “encourage[s] a healthy relationship between private-sector workers and their employers, which policy makers viewed as vital to the national interest.”
Healthy relationship
is a relative term. This particular definition came from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which is the federal agency the NLRA created. It seems to me that a forced relationship (or association) is anything but healthy. Rather, this toxic federal law is a prime example of forced association in every way, with each and every party affected negatively. Let's start from the top.

64

Firstly, the NLRA requires private employers to work with certified unions (that are certified not by a neutral third party, but by the government). In doing so, the government is limiting the means by which private employers work and relate with their very own employees. Collective bargaining becomes the rule without the consent of one of the parties, the employer itself. “In ordinary contract law and on the basis of freedom of association, any contract between A and B that is the result of either A or B being forced to bargain with the other is null and void.”
¹⁷
The government seems to ignore these established legal principles. Through the NLRA, it grossly violates the private property of the business owner and subsequently demolishes its right of association.

Ironically enough, the NLRA also violates the associational freedoms of the very individuals it seeks to protect: The individual workers. Their rights are violated in two ways. First, when a union has been approved by the majority of workers at a company as the “bargaining agent,” that union becomes the sole bargaining agent for all workers. It is the voice both of those who voted to join the union and those who voted against the union.
¹⁸
As a result, a monopoly develops, and individual workers are barred from even representing themselves; they have been forced to associate with the majority.

Secondly, the NLRA compels the workers to pay union dues whether or not they voted for the union in the first place.
¹⁹
The concept is called
union security
, but it is simply
forced association
.
²⁰

And lastly, the unions themselves endure forced association in yet a different manner. Unions must associate and accept as members any individual workers who wish to join, even those who hate unions, or may cause them harm. Also, if the employer wishes to bargain, the union is obligated to do so “under the principle of mandatory good-faith bargaining” (although this forced association tends to work in the union's favor).
²¹

The NLRA violates the rights of all parties involved, stripping them of their freedom of association. Not a single entity—employer, individual worker, or union—has the right to associate with the entity or individuals of its choosing. It is amazing how the NLRA managed to hit so many birds with one stone. As you can see, “the authors of the U.S. Constitution would have considered the NLRA unconstitutional on its face.”
²²

There is
one party
that benefits from this forceful, freedom-negating federal regulation: The government. As a result of this labor union–private employer arrangement, the state grows in power, asserting a substantial amount of authority over the private sphere.

65

Professor Charles Baird poses a solution to the government's obsession with coercion and its tendency to violate the freedom of association: “If Congress insists on giving unions special privileges of coercion, it should be honest and promulgate a constitutional amendment that says freedom of association does not apply in labor markets. Don't hold your breath.”
²³
When was the last time the government was honest with you?

Conclusion

Court orders can't make the races mix.

—Z
ORA
N
EALE
H
URSTON

A folklorist associated with the Harlem Renaissance, Zora Neale Hurston was a preeminent author of the twentieth century most famous for her novel,
Their Eyes Were Watching God
. She staunchly opposed governmental intervention when the result was any kind of violation of individual freedoms. Even as a black woman, she stayed true to her belief that national law should be colorblind and went so far as to oppose government-mandated racial integration in schools because she respected the freedom of association and believed the state should never have a role in violating personal rights. Zora Neale Hurston knew laws should not be enforced based on an individual's race, but rather decisions, such as association, must be left up to individuals to make for themselves, whether based or not based on another's race. She believed integration would never be successful under the forcible hand of the state; rather, segregated schools would become equal when people personally decided to integrate.

66

Zora Neale Hurston was so true to her convictions and belief in freedom that she vehemently disagreed with the Supreme Court's
Brown v. Board of Education
decision in 1954 mandating the racial integration of government-owned schools. She even wrote a letter to the
Orlando Sentinel
entitled, “Court Order Can't Make the Races Mix.” Not trusting the government to help black America, she continually questioned, “How much satisfaction can I get from a court order for somebody to associate with me who does not wish me near them?” Just as Zora Neale Hurston espoused: The federal government cannot solve our problems, the South's, or anyone else's for that matter. We must be free to associate with those we choose, and the rest is up to time, education, and free market principles.

How dedicated is the government to the freedom of association? Professor Walter E. Williams suggests a test:

The true test of one's commitment to freedom of association doesn't come when he permits people to associate in ways he deems appropriate. It comes when he permits people to voluntarily associate in ways he deems offensive.
²⁴

Unfortunately for us, the freedom of association is just one more test the government has failed.

67

Chapter 5
You Can Leave Any Time You Want:
The Freedom to Travel

Steve Bierfeldt, the Director of Development for Ron Paul's Campaign for Liberty, had a particularly frustrating day of travel on March 29th 2009 after attending his organization's regional conference in St. Louis. There, he sold Campaign for Liberty items, such as conference tickets, bumper stickers, T-shirts, and books.
¹
Transporting more than $4,700 in cash and checks from merchandise sales, Bierfeldt traveled from downtown St. Louis to Lambert-St. Louis International Airport with the intention of returning to Washington, D.C. The government, however, had another idea.

Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officials detained Bierfeldt for further screening when they discovered a metal box in his luggage containing a large amount of cash and checks. The TSA is an agency of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and according to its Web site, “protects the Nation's transportation systems to ensure freedom of movement for people and commerce.” Bierfeldt might not agree with that last part. TSA agents interrogated Bierfeldt for over a half hour and would not allow him to continue to his gate until he answered some very directed questions: “Where do you work?” “What are you planning to do with the money?” “Where did you acquire the money?” Although having nothing to hide, Bierfeldt, in an effort to maintain his privacy, refused to answer the questions. The officers retaliated by further detaining him and asking viciously demeaning questions. As far as they were concerned, Bierfeldt could be prevented from moving freely so long as he refused to answer every prying inquiry they might conjure up. To them, if he wished to keep his privacy, then he should have wallowed in the safety of his own home. Bierfeldt never answered their questions, and they eventually let him go in time to catch his flight.

68

As terrifying as it is to envision a world where authority figures could detain and question us for nearly any reason they chose, consider the further effects of this policy. Bierfeldt, if he valued his privacy above all else and, therefore, stayed huddled in his home, would no longer be in a position to pursue his lawful employment as a Director of Development for Dr. Paul. Furthermore, he would also no longer be free to express his political views by participating in and advocating the Campaign for Liberty's values. Still further, if individuals such as Steve Bierfeldt were forced to stay at home in order to keep their privacy and dignity, then the public would lose all access to these political ideas. Stated simply, the government could eviscerate constitutional rights simply by burdening the ability to travel of those whose ideas it hates or fears.

A companion phenomenon now becoming apparent is the resort by the President to ruling by decree—and the people's general acceptance of it. I speak, of course, of the decision by the Obama administration to purchase from former members of the Bush administration so-called back scanner X-ray machines for use at airports. These devices, which cannot detect small amounts of plastic explosive on the skin or anything, plastic or metal, hidden in a body cavity, nevertheless give the false impression of enhancing the safety of the flying public because of the lurid, graphic, even pornographic nature of the digital images they produce.

The government, in order to induce the public into a sheep-like, dazed-infused, knee-jerk acceptance of the porn scanners, offered an alternative even more invasive, unconstitutional, and odious: A public zipper-opening, blouse-removing, groping-your-private-parts alternative.

Never mind that you own your own body, never mind that the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution guarantees that the government cannot touch you against your will without probable cause of crime or a warrant from a judge based on probable cause, and never mind that there is no authority in the Constitution for the federal government to protect private property; it has reached its ugly hands and peering eyes and insatiable lust into our trousers as a way to induce us to be submissive.

The Congress did not authorize the porn-or-grope alternative. Indeed, no member of Congress could vote for this and survive politically. And the one who will rule by decree, that would be the President, claims he did not authorize this; the “security professionals” who work for him did so. He is fooling no one. He can stop this with a telephone call. He prefers us to be pliant.

Even in the Bush years, this porn-or-grope choice was unthinkable. Today it is with us. However, worse than this Hobson's choice is the repellant submissive acceptance of all this by millions of innocent flyers whom the government has duped into thinking it can keep safe. Question: Has the porn-or-grope regime discovered a single dangerous item of contraband at an American airport—a box cutter, a handgun, or an explosive—in or on anyone flying in America? Answer: No. But government propaganda works.