Anti-discrimination laws are still state coercion

June 16, 11:44 PMAnchorage Libertarian ExaminerKevin Wilmeth

Previous Next

1 comment Print Email RSS Subscribe

Subscribe

Get alerts when there is a new article from the Anchorage Libertarian Examiner. Read Examiner.com's terms of use.

Email Address   Include other special offers from Examiner.com Terms of Use

The bickering about the details of the latest "anti-discrimination law" continues, with the City of Anchorage offering a rewrite to exempt certain groups from what it imposes on others. 

Who is exempt?  Who gets included?  What constitutes discrimination?  And above all, what are the juicy penalties?  Oh please tell us, O benevolent ones!  Without it all spelled out, we are doomed to catastrophe!

Are you vomiting yet?  If not, why?  Watching endless groups of people carefully cultivated by the state try to use the state's coercive power to impose their wills on each other, to the benefit of nobody except...the state, is disgusting and it always has been.

The whole issue could be made a lot simpler if government got altogether out of the business of trying to force people to do things, even things in the category of "dudes, just be nice to one another".  Seriously, would any decent human feel better knowing that someone else was forced into considering (if not outright preferring) him over someone else, by the threat of law backed up by men with guns (oh, and Tasers...don't forget the Tasers) and tin stars?  Even non-psychologists can probably figure out that's not exactly a validation of one's inherent merit.

Typically for government, this sort of solution does nothing to fix the problem (are we not here answering the same question, again?), and it stirs up bitterness and resentment in the meantime, while ever reducing our available universe of choices to a discrete list of "approved" ones.  It's all lose-lose for us.  However, from the cui bono perspective, the state makes out rather well;  do not all the involved groups come right back to the teat to argue over who got shafted, how can we make this or that little change, and who shall we stick it to next?  Make me a deal, Marty, I'm in a dealin' mood!

We joke about auto mechanics creating the customer's next problem while fixing the current one, in the interest of, em, "future business", but somehow it's inconceivable that the state would do the same thing, despite numerous and obvious incentives to do so.  (Anyone who would suggest such must be a kook or a loony, and probably belongs on the terrorist/"hate group" watch list.)

And so we argue pointlessly about "gay marriage", instead of more appropriately asking what authority the state has over any interpersonal relationship.  We chew petulantly through statistics in vain attempts to prove or disprove the efficacy of gun control, instead of asking how it could ever be acceptable to render the peaceable defenseless by government force.  We waste billions of dollars and hours of attention on increasingly Rube Goldberg bolt-ons to the War on (some) Drugs instead of admitting that it is the concept that is bankrupt, not the details.  (And then we wonder why the country is starting to look like a police state.)

LeFevre nailed it on this one:  "Government is a disease masquerading as its own cure."  If the state really wants to work to end discrimination, it can start by respecting people's rights to make their own choices.

Don't hold your breath.